]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=113442015-03-14T03:04:50Z2015-03-14T03:04:50ZContinue reading →]]>But first, if you are superstitious then be wary since it is Friday the 13th. If you know anything about numbers, and you live in the US, then you can be irrational on Saturday which is Pi Day.

This pi day stuff works only in the US convention of writing mm/dd/yy for dates.

But whatever you do, beware the Ides of March.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=113392015-03-12T14:47:01Z2015-03-12T14:47:01ZWell, I am off to a conference. Public Choice Society Conference in San Antonio TX.
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112902015-03-13T17:42:03Z2015-03-11T22:56:05ZContinue reading →]]> Many people — including some economists — often confuse money with wealth. This frequently leads to avoidable errors and bad policies. It is best to take money out of most discussions and focus on wealth, unless of course one is specifically discussing money.

Wealth and money are distinct but often used interchangeably because wealth is always denominated in terms of money. The primary distinction is that wealth is real and money is nominal. Wealth is anything that we can consume in the broadest sense of the word. Wealth is what we eat, wear, find shelter in, store for later consumption, drive around in, the machines we use to make stuff, stuff that you can hold in your hands and kick around — the tangibles. Wealth is also the intangibles like know-how (another word for technology), knowledge and skills that humans have.

Wealth can be acquired, possessed, stored, exchanged and consumed. It can also be begged, bought, stolen, borrowed and lent. Money is just a mechanism for facilitating exchange, and of course monetary terms are used to keep track of who has how much wealth, who owes whom, etc. We exchange wealth using money. What we are exchanging is rights: the right to use the wealth. When more people create more stuff (tangible or intangible), wealth increases. The aggregate production of wealth in a specified period is called aggregate income. For an economy, this is known as the gross domestic product (GDP). Who gets how much of the aggregate production is called income. Ideally, a person’s income reflects the person’s contribution towards the production of aggregate wealth.

A point that brings out the distinction between money and wealth is that money can be destroyed more easily than wealth. Suppose a plane carrying $100 million in money crashes. Hundred people each had given $1 million to buy some asset, say, a factory in the destination city. Suppose the plane was a corporate jet, replacement value $10 million. How much wealth was lost? Only $10 million. The $100 million in money that went up in flames did not reduce aggregate wealth. The factory did not go up in flames. Only those who were going to have the rights to the factory are out of that right. They have lost wealth (which they had earned presumably by working to produce the wealth that translated into $1 million each) but the total wealth of the nation decreased only by the $10 million that was the plane was valued at.

Take the case of Joe, the neighborhood super-multi-billionaire. Perhaps he accumulated his fabulous wealth by starting a business selling over-priced smart phones that people lined by the millions to buy. Or perhaps he amassed his wealth by selling cocaine. In any case, Joe had acquired all the Maseratis and French villas as he could wish to own. Then he uses some of his wealth to buy Picassos worth $300 million to show off his position in society. Is his conspicuous “consumption” bad for the economy? Not really.

What he has done by buying $300 million worth of paintings is that he had transferred $300 million to the sellers of the paintings — who presumably would buy other stuff and eventually through the vast nexus of exchanges across the economy, it would mean that Mike Schmuck gets his job of painting some outhouse in the boonies and is able to buy groceries that Dick Farmer has produced. Wealth is created and consumed regardless of who bought the Picasso and for how much.

Maybe Joe the drug lord likes to show off his wealth by smoking his crack cocaine in $1000 bills. Is Joe destroying wealth? No! He’s actually redistributing wealth. To whom? To all the Joe Schmucks who have their savings or their earnings in dollars. When someone destroys dollars they own (regardless of how they came to possess those dollars), they are making the remaining dollars (money) more valuable. Joe is doing a public service by reducing inflation by a very tiny amount.

In effect, Joe the drug lord, by smoking $1K bills, is giving back some of his rights to wealth that he could have consumed and therefore making it available to others. Joe’s destruction of money is an act of generosity. Joe is an altruist. I would call it the “anti-theft of wealth by the destruction of money.” The converse of that act is “the theft of wealth through the creation of money.”

Governments routinely engage in the theft of wealth through the creation of money. Since governments have the monopoly on the creation of money, whenever it wants to consume more, it prints money. It then exchanges the newly printed money for stuff (wealth). This leads to inflation. Inflation means that the money you have will buy less stuff than you could have bought before. How much less stuff? The amount that the government has stolen from you by printing money.

One way out of this theft of wealth through the creation of money is to have a competitive market for the creation of money. In other words, private money. Let whoever wants to create money do so — even the government. What about taxes? Taxes could be paid using government issued money. But for all other purposes, people would be free to use whatever money they want to use.

There is much truth in the old saying that money is the root of all evil. But not the truth that is traditionally claimed for it. The actual truth is that the government’s monopoly to print money with abandon is the root of a great deal of evil. Think about it.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=113132015-03-11T03:29:24Z2015-03-11T03:29:24ZContinue reading →]]> The wise and wonderful Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha as he is commonly known, writes an annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. Here are a few excerpts from Buffet’s 2015 letter, courtesy of my friend Rajan Parrikar. Buffet is incomparable. Read and share with those whom you care about.
Here are the excerpts. The link to the complete letter is at the end of these excerpts.

Though we will always invest abroad as well, the mother lode of opportunities runs through America. The treasures that have been uncovered up to now are dwarfed by those still untapped. Through dumb luck, Charlie and I were born in the United States, and we are forever grateful for the staggering advantages this accident of birth has given us.

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I’ve mentioned in the past that my experience in business helps me as an investor and that my investment experience has made me a better businessman. Each pursuit teaches lessons that are applicable to the other. And some truths can only be fully learned through experience. (In Fred Schwed’s wonderful book, Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?, a Peter Arno cartoon depicts a puzzled Adam looking at an eager Eve, while a caption says, “There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures.” If you haven’t read Schwed’s book, buy a copy at our annual meeting. Its wisdom and humor are truly priceless.)

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Indeed, who has ever benefited during the past 238 years by betting against America? If you compare our country’s present condition to that existing in 1776, you have to rub your eyes in wonder. In my lifetime alone, real per-capita U.S. output has sextupled. My parents could not have dreamed in 1930 of the world their son would see. Though the preachers of pessimism prattle endlessly about America’s problems, I’ve never seen one who wishes to emigrate (though I can think of a few for whom I would happily buy a one-way ticket).

The dynamism embedded in our market economy will continue to work its magic. Gains won’t come in a smooth or uninterrupted manner; they never have. And we will regularly grumble about our government. But, most assuredly, America’s best days lie ahead.

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Stock prices will always be far more volatile than cash-equivalent holdings. Over the long term, however, currency-denominated instruments are riskier investments – far riskier investments – than widely-diversified stock portfolios that are bought over time and that are owned in a manner invoking only token fees and commissions.

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Investors, of course, can, by their own behavior, make stock ownership highly risky. And many do. Active trading, attempts to “time” market movements, inadequate diversification, the payment of high and unnecessary fees to managers and advisors, and the use of borrowed money can destroy the decent returns that a life-long owner of equities would otherwise enjoy. Indeed, borrowed money has no place in the investor’s tool kit: Anything can happen anytime in markets. And no advisor, economist, or TV commentator – and definitely not Charlie nor I – can tell you when chaos will occur. Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet.

The commission of the investment sins listed above is not limited to “the little guy.” Huge institutional investors, viewed as a group, have long underperformed the unsophisticated index-fund investor who simply sits tight for decades. A major reason has been fees: Many institutions pay substantial sums to consultants who, in turn, recommend high-fee managers. And that is a fool’s game.

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If you’ve attended our annual meetings, you know Charlie has a wide-ranging brilliance, a prodigious memory, and some firm opinions. I’m not exactly wishy-washy myself, and we sometimes don’t agree. In 56 years, however, we’ve never had an argument. When we differ, Charlie usually ends the conversation by saying: “Warren, think it over and you’ll agree with me because you’re smart and I’m right.”

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Periodically, financial markets will become divorced from reality – you can count on that. More Jimmy Lings will appear. They will look and sound authoritative. The press will hang on their every word. Bankers will fight for their business. What they are saying will recently have “worked.” Their early followers will be feeling very clever. Our suggestion: Whatever their line, never forget that 2+2 will always equal 4. And when someone tells you how old-fashioned that math is — zip up your wallet, take a vacation and come back in a few years to buy stocks at cheap prices.

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My successor will need one other particular strength: the ability to fight off the ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency. When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies can falter. The examples available to prove the point are legion, but to maintain friendships I will exhume only cases from the distant past.

In their glory days, General Motors, IBM, Sears Roebuck and U.S. Steel sat atop huge industries. Their strengths seemed unassailable. But the destructive behavior I deplored above eventually led each of them to fall to depths that their CEOs and directors had not long before thought impossible. Their one-time financial strength and their historical earning power proved no defense.

Only a vigilant and determined CEO can ward off such debilitating forces as Berkshire grows ever larger. He must never forget Charlie’s plea: “Tell me where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” If our non- economic values were to be lost, much of Berkshire’s economic value would collapse as well. “Tone at the top” will be key to maintaining Berkshire’s special culture.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=113072015-03-12T02:13:39Z2015-03-10T19:14:40ZContinue reading →]]>The politician I admire the most is Lee Kuan Yew. Why? Because he is intelligent, learned, wise and gets things done. He is authoritarian — but without authority, you cannot get things done. All great leaders are authoritarian since they have to lead. The problem is not authority; the problem is authoritarian leaders who are stupid. Countries end up in the bottom of heap because of stupid authoritarian leaders. Two notable authoritarian leaders in India’s history are Nehru and MK Gandhi. How wise they were is clear from the evidence: India is a desperately poor country. China too had its fair share of stupid authoritarian leaders. And like India, it was awfully poor. But its fortunes changed. How? Because of one man.
Deng Xiaoping.

Among all people that Lee Kuan Yew has ever met, the man he admires the most is Deng Xiaoping, as he claimed in his chat with Charlie Rose in October 2009. Watch.

There’s only one Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore was lucky to get the original. China was lucky that it got Deng Xiaoping who learned from Lee Kuan Yew. The hundreds of millions of Indians, especially the poor, need a Lee Kuan Yew. Since India cannot have the original, a copy would do. But they broke the mold after making him. So how about a Deng Xiaoping, a man who is wise enough to learn from Lee Kuan Yew? India’s tragedy is that its leaders have proved to be incapable of thinking through problems and learning the solutions from others. Hubris and stupidity are the most potent toxic components of leadership incompetency.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112972015-03-08T13:35:48Z2015-03-08T13:29:53ZContinue reading →]]>The year’s in the Spring. And the clocks spring forward an hour. It’s daylight savings time from today to Nov 1st. The persistence of generalized collective idiocy can be explained by some kind of social inertia. Daylight savings time is a prime example. It was meant to reduce energy use. A little bit of thought should be enough for one to realize that there cannot be — in this present day and age — any energy savings by futzing around with clocks.

Perhaps when energy for lighting was a significant proportion of electricity use, there may have been some justification. But today lighting (commercial and residential) accounts for only 12 percent of total electrical energy consumption. (Source: US Energy Information Administration.)

Energy savings benefits are probably negligibly small at best. But the costs of changing clocks twice a year is not small, and it is growing. That proposition is too obvious to necessitate elaboration. Think international travel and communications. Think timetables. Think about the fact that the clocks will be adjusted at different time zones and therefore the change is not globally synchronized: places in the East will “spring forward” hours ahead of places in the West. All this pushes what was plain idiocy into insanity territory.

Bottom line: changing clocks saves as much energy as it saves time: zilch. Solution: make DST the time year round.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112932015-03-07T16:22:02Z2015-03-07T16:22:02ZContinue reading →]]>Holi was on March 6th in India. Most fun festival. Fun-loving people all over the world like it. Check out this video Nitai Gauranga music video recorded at Festival of Colors, Hare Krishna Temple, Spanish Fork, Utah.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112762015-03-05T03:08:01Z2015-03-05T02:57:36ZContinue reading →]]>Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), one of the Founding Fathers of the US and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence is believed to have written that “an informed citizenry is the bulwark of a democracy.” Bulwark — a defensive wall — is against something or someone. I don’t know the context in which Jefferson wrote that (or even if he did write it at all) but I’d like to think what he meant was that an informed citizenry protects democracy from the possible tyranny of the government.
Ideally, a democratic government is not an enemy of the people but all real governments tend to degenerate over time because of two factors. First, governments have the power to coerce. And second, the government is comprised not of saints but imperfect people just like the rest of us. Lord Acton’s observation that power tends to corrupt comes into force and the dry rot of tyranny begins. People in positions of power tend to become corrupt and abuse the power they have.

For the preservation of democracy, which is in essence the preservation of the freedom of all citizens, the citizens must know what the government is doing. Ignorance of government malfeasance is bad for citizens but those in government have an interest in keeping the public ignorant. Governments often hide behind the “national security” smokescreen to avoid having to reveal their misdeeds. Governments that hide what they are doing from their citizens eventually create an adversarial relationship between the two.

The best leaders attempt to break down the information barrier to create conditions that promote a healthy symbiotic relationship between the people and the government. After all, we the people create the government so that we can get those things done which require community effort and which we will not be able to achieve acting individually. Government is our agent and we are the principals. But if we don’t know what our agent is up to, in what sense are we the people principals?

It seems to me that great leadership is about leading a government that is on the citizens’ side. Great leadership is open and transparent about what the government is doing and why. It is about accountability and responsiveness. At its foundation, great leadership consists in fighting the government on behalf of the people if the government is not doing its duty.

Prime Minister Modi has the opportunity to show that he sides with the people of India in their struggles against the government. I believe that he was given a remarkable mandate in the last general elections in India because people trusted that he is on their side. A social contract was definitely forged when he asked for support and the people gave him that. If I am right, then I think it is time that he deliver on the contract.

Trust lies at the heart of any enduring relationship. If the people cannot trust those whom it has elevated to high positions in government, it will inevitably lead to a cynical but rational rejection of governmental authority. Trust has to be deserved and earned. For that, those in government have to be forthcoming about what they have achieved and more importantly, what they have failed to achieve. A great leader tells all and lets the people decide whether or not he or she has delivered on the promises made.

The first and the most significant sign of failure of leadership is when those in government cannot reveal what the government has been up to. Secrecy or even the reluctance to make public all that the government knows signals failed leadership and gross incompetency.

There preliminary general comments need to be illustrated with some concrete example. A government which is dedicated to socialist ideals puts significant emphasis on the involvement of the public sector in ordinary commerce. India is a socialist country, not by accident but by design. The constitution mandates it. Maybe that’s good. But let the people decide if socialism is good in practice or not, regardless of the lofty claims made by socialism about promoting the general welfare. For the people to decide, the people have to know.

Now for the one specific case I would like to explore: the Indian government’s involvement in commercial aviation. Air India is a public sector undertaking, a PSU. Why the government of any country should be in the business of commercial aviation is a question that needs to be seriously asked and honestly answered. But that has neither been asked nor answered. However, a great leader would proactively answer that question. And the best answer would be one that is both intelligible and accessible to the average citizen.

By intelligible I mean that the answer should be stated in terms that one does not have to be a certified chartered accountant and a financial analyst to understood them. By accessible I mean that one should not have to expend herculean effort to find the answer. If one has seek an answer after making an application in triplicate with attestations by notary public and other rigmarole, then it is not easily accessible. The aim should be to keep the information simple and the access equivalent to what one needs to make, say, a railway reservation.

Let’s get the accessibility issue out of the way first. The obvious channel is to have a government website with the information. Agreed that only a small portion of citizens currently have access to the Internet but that should not be a deterrent. After all, given that nearly half of the people are illiterate, publishing them on paper would be costly and still not reach all.

The information should be out there for anyone interested in getting it without going through any “Right to Information” mechanisms. To be frank, I think the much trumpeted RTI is a load of ignorant nonsense but I will not go down that sidetrack here. Getting information that the public is entitled to should be as easy as getting the weather forecast. There are people who have weather information (it’s their job as meteorologists) and one simply navigates over to the appropriate website without having to file an application to get the weather forecast. One doesn’t have to invoke some “Right to Weather Forecast Information” law. A RWFI is silly and it is equally silly to have something like RTI.

So here’s what I would like to see: A website for “AIR INDIA for INDIANS”. It will list profit/losses for each year of operation. Cumulative profit and losses for each year. Assets — how many planes, etc. How many employees etc. The management and the top management’s qualification and their salaries. Finally, comparisons. We need to know how AIR INDIA compares to other airlines. Average number of employees per aircraft, average load factor, and so on. This will help us figure out whether AIR INDIA is an asset or a liability for the Indian taxpayer.

It has always been a mystery to me why AIR INDIA is a PSU. To be entirely honest, I am prejudiced against AIR INDIA as a matter of general principle. I believe that the government has no business to be in business. (I have been saying that for a couple of decades and was quite heartened to hear Shri Modi express that sentiment a few times during his election campaign. But perhaps I just imagined it, since I am a big Modi supporter.) I can argue why the government should not be in business but not right now.

Right now I’d like to just know the facts. The facts I want to know is how much benefit have Indians derived from the government running a commercial airline. If the benefits are positive, I will be the first to push for continued government involvement in commercial aviation. If on the other hand, AIR INDIA has accumulated losses decade after decade, I’d like to know how much and I’d like an explanation from the government why Indian taxpayers should continue to suffer losses because of the incompetence of those in charge.

Finally, if the government is unwilling to put up this website, I’d like some NGO to create it. Shame the government into doing what it should have done in the first place.

In conclusion, I think that this government headed by Prime Minister Modi has an unprecedented (as in, having no precedent) opportunity to turn India around. What PM Modi has to do is to show people that he’s on their side. He has to change the decades-old adversarial government into a government that fights for the people, not against them.

Everything cannot be changed overnight and it is immature to expect PM Modi to work miracles. But making sure that the citizenry is informed is hardly a difficult task in the modern information age. It’s not a matter of resources. Any educated teenager can put together a website on a lazy weekend. It’s all matter of will, vision, a commitment to transparent and accountable governance.

Will India have an informed citizenry? I am afraid not anytime soon.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112642015-03-05T05:24:51Z2015-03-04T04:51:04ZContinue reading →]]>There are problems. That implies solutions. Whether or not you can find a solution to any specific problem cannot be granted. It cannot be also be granted that you know the solution or are even capable of finding a solution. The solution may exist but you aren’t given the capacity or the means to solve it. Then it is not a problem that you should concern yourself with. Live with it.

Quite often a situation is defined as a problem. It may not be. It may be that that’s just the way things are. Being able to distinguish between situations that you can do something about or not is important. It’s not a problem if no one can do anything about it. Get used to it.
Many so called problems are actually cut out of whole cloth. Why manufacture problems? Because then they can sell you a solution. If you can manufacture a problem, then you can create a demand for a solution. Usually the solution leads to handsome rewards for those who manufactured the problem. Their incentive to create “problems” is that they profit from selling the “solution.”

Even if there is a real problem, you can never be guaranteed that those who are selling the solution actually have a solution. They may be snake oil salesmen.

Snake oil salesmen are quite common. They have an incentive to persuade you that there is a problem because they just happen to have the solution to your problem.

Politicians are the most consummate snake oil salesmen. They have to manufacture problems so that they can sell you a solution. Priests, especially of the monotheistic persuasion, routinely use this technique.

The Zeroth Law of Problem is that problems can be manufactured. That is what I call the “Existence law.”

The 1st Law of Problems is that “People will have a solution to the problem they’ve manufactured.”

The 2nd Law of Problems is that “If you buy the solution, then your problem will be solved.”

The 3rd (and final) Law of Problems is that “If you don’t buy the solution, you will face an even bigger problem.”

Let me illustrate this. People are who they are. But if you could persuade them that they are born in “sin”, then you have sold them the problem. After having defined the problem, you then claim that you have the solution — salvation that is mediated through you. It’s then an easy next step to sell them the solution, which usually involved payments to you.

If you don’t buy their solution, you will roast in hell — the even bigger problem.

Socialists have learned that technique mastered by the Catholic Church. They sell you the problem and can depend on a great number of people to buy their solution. The problem that socialist sell is that somehow evil-minded people are exploiting the poor. Morally righteous people in control of the economy would solve this problem. So the solution is that you have to follow the orders of those in command of a command-and-control system.

Aside from manufactured problems, there are real problems. That does not mean that we know the solution. It could be beyond anyone’s capacity to solve them. The best we can do is to recognize that that’s the way it’s going to be. Perpetual motion machines would be great to have but it’s futile to keep trying to invent one. The laws of thermodynamics preclude that.

There’s the problem of climate change. The climate is changing is not news. It has always changed and it will continue to change, regardless of anything humans do or don’t. Can we do something about it? Sure. Will it be worth doing? That’s a question the answer to which is definitely not “Let’s all stop whatever we are doing because otherwise we’re all going to die.”

For some problems, there are known solutions. Not known to you perhaps but nevertheless known to someone. It’s smart to search and find solutions that have been already discovered.

It’s stupid to believe that you know all there’s to know about the world. Only the ignorant make that assumption. And they suffer the consequences. It’s all karma, neh?

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112352015-03-02T05:28:56Z2015-03-02T02:52:30ZContinue reading →]]>After I wrote that post on “People I Admire“, I began thinking that I should start listing my heroes. So let’s make this a series. Here’s part 2 of the series. I will mention two people. One of them used to be my neighbor at the Convent. Did you know that I spent one year at the Convent? Yes I did, although it was naturally not a functioning convent when I lived there. The other person is someone I haven’t met but I would dearly like to meet. He works (and I guess, lives) in the SF Bay area, and therefore I can claim that he’s a distant neighbor. They share one thing in common: they are both black — or to use the more politically correct term, they are African-American.
OK, so let’s start with my year of living in the Convent. As a student at UC Berkeley, I lived in a student housing co-op, the University Students Cooperative Association (USCA.) The first year I lived in a house (the largest in the co-op) called Cloyne Court & Hotel. Why that name? Because it used to be a hotel once upon a time. It’s an ancient structure, with the distinction of being on the National Registry of Historic Buildings.

Cloyne Court was huge and it housed 150 students. It also meant total chaos. So when I got the opportunity, I moved to a smaller house. The Convent (picture left), with only 24 residents, was the smallest house in the co-op. The move from the biggest house to the smallest house was really refreshing although the commute went up a bit. Cloyne Court was at the edge of the campus but the Convent was a mile west. But I am not complaining.

I got a nice corner room at the Convent overlooking the courtyard. Actually, it was more like a 8′x10′ cell but with great big windows. Remember that it used to be an actual convent. It even had a chapel which had been converted into a large game and music room. Anyhow, all the rooms were single-occupancy and small, except for one room downstairs which used to be the Mother Superior’s room and had its own attached bathroom.

Anyway, enough with the description of the general scenery.

I had noticed that the room next to mine at the Convent was always locked and that I had not seen the resident. I asked and got to know that it was a room reserved for one Mr Ward Connerly. Who? I was told that Connerly was a Regent of the University of California and that when he come to Berkeley on Regent related work, instead of staying at an expensive hotel, he sleeps over at the Convent. With time, I got to know that Mr Connerly was someone who had earned the eternal hatred of leftists. That immediately endeared him to me. I leave you to read his biography on the Wiki. Too bad I never got to meet him even though he was in a sense my neighbor.

I admire him for his principled stance on a topic of great interest to me: institutionalized discrimination. I think it is just fine by me if a person discriminates against me for whatever reason. And I too reserve my right as an individual to discriminate for or against a person or a group of my liking or disliking. What I am against is institutionalized discrimination. For instance, I don’t want the government or the legal system to discriminate for or against me based on some attribute of mine that I have no control over. It goes against the generality principle and principle of equality under law.

I will introduce the other person in the next piece in this series. Please feel free to guess who that might be.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112252015-02-27T19:12:15Z2015-02-27T19:08:56ZContinue reading →]]>“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” That according to Nelson Mandela.

I object to the characterization of education as a weapon. Weapons are used as tools of destruction, not construction. Remember the distinction between tools and weapons: all weapons are tools (instruments; means to an end) but not all tools are weapons (“any device used in order to inflict damage or harm to living beings, structures, or systems.”)

Changing the world is a fine objective. Most people want some changes in the world around them and most people (though not all) want some change in themselves too.
Education changes the person, the individual. But that in itself does not mean automatically that the change is for the better. One can get educated into wrong ways of thinking. Indeed it is easier to get educated into wrong rather than right ways because there are more ways of being wrong than being right. Think entropy.

Change is inevitable, as the Buddha had noted. Impermanence being a fundamental characteristic of the universe, change is unavoidable. That impermanence leads to existential suffering because we want to grasp (cling, hold on to) what is changing. We want good things to last forever; and we want to change through an act of will what we consider as bad.

Politicians often talk about bringing about change because most people are dissatisfied with the prevailing situation. To be a successful politician one has to promise costless change. You have to sell your prescription that you will effect change that is all good and at zero cost. You have to convince people that all they need to do is elect you and then you will give them free this that or the other without anyone having to pay for it.

That is of course absolutely false. There’s nothing free. There’s always a cost to everything. Sure, you can mess around with the price of something but the cost does not go away just because you sweep it out of view under the carpet. The reason that politicians can promise free stuff to voters is because the voters are too stupid (or too lazy) to understand that nothing is free of cost.

Even freedom is not free. But that’s a topic for a later date.

Back to change. As I wrote a few years ago, change is a vector, not a scalar. “Sure we want change. But change is a vector, not a scalar. Change has a magnitude and a direction. You cannot just say that the goal is 5 miles away from where we are; you have to specify not just the distance but also the direction in which to proceed.”

In any case, short pithy statements like the one by Mandela are usually lazy and superficial ways of characterizing the world. Most political leaders are adept at that kind of statements because they derive their popularity from the masses — and the masses are only capable of clutching at the superficial and are too lazy to think for themselves. Thinking is hard for everyone but it is also unpleasant for the unwashed masses.

Physical or mental, exertion is not a pleasurable exercise for most people. A minority of people find pumping iron at the gym fun; a few more get to the gym but do it only as a grim duty; as for the rest, exercise is too unpleasant even to contemplate. Similarly, a few people think hard about things just for the sheer joy of it; the rest have to be paid to even exert any minor effort.

The reason why politicians make the kind of stupid, inane statements they usually do is plain. First, being a politician is being a professional. To be a successful professional, you have to specialize. It takes years of hard, focused, concentrated effort to become a competent lawyer or a surgeon or an economist or a scientist or whathaveyou. The “or” is important — you can be a great lawyer or a great surgeon or a great scientist. You cannot be a great lawyer and a great scientist and a great politician. (Exceptions test the rule. Benjamin Franklin types are exceptions. Besides he lived a couple of centuries ago, when the world was simpler.)

So politicians specialize in appealing to the public. Therefore they have to think like the public. Even if they know better, they cannot show that they know better. Here’s a simple exercise. Candidate A promises freebies for all and says it will not cost anything. Candidate B promises that trade-off will have to be made and if people want more of X, they will have to pay for it in terms of less of Y. When the people vote, candidate A will win handsomely.

Sometimes of course there’s the sincere but stupid candidate C. He misapprehends the world and thinks that everyone can have everything for free. These are rare.

Back to Mandela’s statement. It would be good to make a collection of stupid statements that sound very compelling to the masses. These are statements with very high stupidity quotients (SQ). Perhaps I will put that up on Quora.

Mohandas Gandhi was a master in the business of encapsulating a totally misapprehended view of the world into a minimum length sentence. An example? “An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind.” It is hard to find so much idiocy concentrated into so few words. The “stupidity per word quotient” (SQ) is astounding. ﻿

{If you’re wondering why I put that Denmark is free image, I wanted to highlight that nothing is free.}

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112092015-02-25T01:57:04Z2015-02-25T01:44:06ZContinue reading →]]>A little while ago, I saw this tweet — which I append below. It relates to the mainstream media’s response to Shri Mohan Bhagwat’s comment that “Mother” Teresa was motivated by her desire to convert people to Christianity. That seems really odd to me. I would have surmised that the fact that Teresa was basically in the business of proselytizing and converting would be as unremarkable as the fact that the Pope is a Catholic. Whatever she did — and she was remarkably candid about it — she maintained was because she was serving her lord and savior Jesus Christ. Christ wanted everyone to be saved through him. So what’s so bloody remarkable about noting that she was primarily motivated by what she admitted to: saving souls?

I agree that the left-liberals are particularly prone to getting their panties in a twist if any of their holy cows are gored. Prof Vaidya mentions only three of course considering that it’s a tweet. The herd is fairly large and membership into the herd requires (among other qualifications) a proven ability to negatively assess anything and everything that the Indian civilization has to offer. Be that as it may, here I would like to talk about the second-oldest holy cow, Jawaharlal Nehru (the oldest being Mohandas K Gandhi.)

His Holy-Cowness Nehru (henceforth HHC Mr Nehru) is special in the sense that he conferred on himself the status of being an Indian holy cow. (His Self-Anointed Holy Cow Mr Nehru, or HSAHC Nehru.) Now you may recall that this was a bit of a habit with him. He gave himself an award, the highest civilian award. He conferred on himself the exalted status of being a “Bharat Ratna” (a Jewel of India.) Now ordinary mortals like you and yours truly would be deterred by basic decency and an innate sense of fairness from decorating ourselves so shamelessly as HHC Nehru did. But he was far from ordinary. (His daughter followed suit, I believe, in the “Jewel of India” shamelessness department.)

HCC Nehru did not like his holy-cowness to be gored. His response to public criticism was that of any tinpot dictator’s, namely, imprison the dissenter. I am too lazy right now to get you the gory (neat pun, eh?) details but here’s a quick excerpt from Milton Friedman. Good ol’ Uncle Milton visited India three times, in 1955, ’63 and finally in ’79. In a brief paper titled “Indian Economic Planning”, he lays out his impressions about the Indian economy, what ails it and what in his opinion should be done. At one point he talks about the pernicious effects of corruption. Remember, this is from over 50 years ago!

As we all appreciate, centralized government control leads to corruption. Friedman says that corruption, aside from destroying the morale and efficiency of the civil service, it also undermines the free press by muting any negative opinion of the government. Naturally, HHC Nehru was the government in the ’60s. (Later his sainted daughter topped that, and was hailed as “Indira is India, and India is Indira.”) HHC Nehru did not like to be criticized. Friedman wrote:

For example, as a result of the Chinese episode, a not-negligible fraction of the intellectuals I met, even those strongly in favor of the general economic policies for the government, have become disenchanted with Nehru and believe that he should be replaced. Yet I read not a single editorial or column in any major English-language newspaper voicing such a view. Published statements to this effect were either in explicitly party organs or in small-circulation personal journals. I head of one journalist who had been discharged from a leading newspaper because of anti-Nehru comments in his articles. Three persons who circulated a public letter after the Chinese invasion urging that Nehru be replaced were held in jail for some months without ever being brought to trial and then released. While I heard different stories about the extent to which this event had even been reported in the press, apparently none of the newspapers conducted a vigorous editorial campaign about the incident.

The bottom line is that old habits die hard. The media has become used to bowing and scraping under HHC Nehru & his progeny’s regimes. The pseudo-intellectuals have been nourished at the ample teats of the government holy cow. So little surprise that these idiot pseudo-intellectuals are all complaining that Teresa, the Catholic Holy Cow, is being led into some disinfecting sunshine.

]]>7Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=112012015-02-23T22:08:53Z2015-02-23T21:49:55ZContinue reading →]]>The god of the Old Testament is the same god that Christians adopted in their New Testament. Following the Jews and the Christians, Islam proclaimed the same monotheistic god. Who is this god? Richard Dawkins, a non-believer, characterized that god in his book The God Delusion thusly:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Every word in that description is justified — within the so-called “holy” books. Chapter and verse can be quoted to show why that god is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction.”

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111932015-02-23T19:02:01Z2015-02-23T18:48:28ZContinue reading →]]>Here’s a list of pages that deal with the “Mother” Teresa. These pages don’t show up in the category “Mother Teresa” — hence this post.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111882015-02-21T22:13:12Z2015-02-21T20:05:31ZContinue reading →]]>I admire a few public figures intensely. Among those who are still around, the physicist Murray Gell-Mann makes that short list. Among the dear departed physicists are Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. Politicians mostly make it to my list of “Most Intensely Disliked” list but there is one exception: Lee Kuan Yew makes it to “Most Intensely Admired” list. My list “Economists I Admire the Most” has the usual suspects like Adam Smith, Friedrich August von Hayek, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman — and James M Buchanan,Jr.
Buchanan passed away only recently in Jan 2013. To get a quick sense of who he was, read the NY Times obituary of Buchanan by Robert McFadden (an economist)

Buchanan is my guide to my current study of constitutional public choice. Once I have a decent handle on the topic, I am sure to write about it on this blog.

Moving on, among people whose concern are matters spiritual, I hold Matthieu Ricard in the highest esteem. He is the only one whom I have met in person and chatted with. Here’s a recent video of his that I recommend.

In this TED talk, Matthieu touches on the topic of climate change. That’s a topic that I have not expressed an opinion about but I do have a very definite — and unpopular — opinion. I think what is generally (but not by all) recommended is a bunch of hogwash.

Moving on to philosophers: by nature my thinking is most consonant with Advaita Vedanta. Since it was developed centuries ago by the ancients in India, not as much as known about those who developed them. You don’t see them on YouTube or TED talks unlike the modern philosophers. (Just btw, I consider those economists I mentioned as “worldly philosophers”.) My list of philosophers includes Adi Sankara (Hindu) and Nagarjuna (Buddhist.)

I will have to write a more comprehensive list one of these days.

]]>8Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111862015-02-21T19:27:33Z2015-02-21T19:27:33ZContinue reading →]]>Lee Kuan Yew is in intensive care in a hospital in Singapore (Yahoo news.) I am afraid that he will not be around for long but I hope my fears are unfounded. I wish that India had had a leader of his intellect and dedication at the time of India’s political independence from British rule. Unfortunately for hundreds of millions of Indians, India got saddled with Gandhi and following him, Nehru. Both will be judged harshly by the generations to come but that is scant consolation for those who suffered in the past and for those who continue to suffer due to the idiotic policies of incompetent and idiotic leaders of India.

I hold most contemporary politicians in contempt and would rejoice to see the back of them. But I will deeply mourn Lee Kuan Yew’s passing for certain. I hope that day is still far away.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111782015-02-15T21:30:55Z2015-02-15T21:30:55ZContinue reading →]]>This one is hauled from the archive. Why? Because these two articles are nice. Even if I myself say so. Also, I am very busy reading and so don’t have the time to write fresh stuff. Or perhaps I am just plain lazy. In any case, do check out the following.

Wars are generally very costly for most people but are always very profitable for some. It is also not too difficult to start a conflict. Envy, greed and covetousness lie just beneath the surface and can be summoned almost at will. Arms manufacturers and arms dealers have the greatest incentive for provoking, fuelling and maintaining conflict. Follow the money if you want to know why some parts of the world suffer chronic conflict.

Societies which have potential fracture lines can still avoid catastrophic breakdown provided the basic set of rules — the constitution — that constrain behaviour were such that it did not stress those divisions. The real danger arises when the constitution makes those fault lines explicit and laws are enacted in accordance with those rules which then discriminate for or against identifiable groups.

Questions, comments?

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111582015-02-14T05:26:52Z2015-02-13T22:21:09ZContinue reading →]]>[Edit note: This piece was written & published elsewhere in Oct 2013. The Indian political scene has changed somewhat since then, thankfully under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi but evidently not enough. True that Rahul Gandhi is no longer relevant but clearly sleazy politicians like Kejriwal and his minions are successful in bamboozling the public in Delhi. This piece is, unfortunately, still relevant.]

If the people of the village, in the best traditions of their hallowed democratic processes, elect the village idiot as the King and Supreme Ruler of the village, it is hard for me to bring myself to find fault with the village idiot. It’s not the idiot’s fault that nature dealt him a lousy hand in the random genetic draw of life. He’s a congenital idiot and made no demands on being recognized as a paragon of wisdom and virtue. Based on that principle, I indicted American voters for electing some of their recent presidents, a few more than once. I can see no reason for not applying that principle to India.
Rahul Gandhi, also widely known as Pappu, is for all appearances a decent enough chap. He didn’t choose to be born to the Gandhi family any more than he sat around selecting his genes from the human gene pool. It was a random draw. He cannot be held responsible for the actions of a fairly large segment of the Indian population who wish to have him as the ruler of India’s destiny. India is a democracy, don’t you know, and the will of the people (admittedly a minority in all known cases) prevails.

India is a country of over 1.2 billion people, about 800 million of whom are desperately poor. None of us can even comprehend how those desperately poor live their lives on less than US$ 2 equivalent a day – an estimated 400 million children malnourished and with no prospects of their ever realizing their human potential; no access to clean drinking water or sanitation for hundreds of million; no chance of getting a decent education; never eating good, nourishing food or enjoying any of the marvellous goodies that modern life has to offer. Nearly 700 million are not reasonably educated and around 500 million of them are actually illiterate even in the 21st century of the Common Era.

For nearly all of its existence as an independent political entity, India has been ruled by the Congress party. That political party inherited from the British all the rules (and added a few of their own) that govern the economy. Ultimately rules are what matter and dictate the destiny of states. Economic policies, a subset of this set of rules, determine whether the country is desperately poor (such as India) or reasonably rich (such as Taiwan.) Social policies determine whether there is social peace (such as in many advanced industrialized countries) or there is internal discord (as seen in third rate countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, and most tragically India.)

It seems hard for me to avoid the conclusion that India’s present dire straits must be to a large extent the doing of the Congress party. But then another thought arises. It was not some heavenly diktat or supernatural force that made the Congress to have such destructive power in India. In India they take democracy seriously, as we are constantly reminded to the point of tedium. The Congress party ruled and rules because the people of India – or at least a significant proportion of them – find them worthy.

The Americans have a saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” The people could be forgiven for putting Nehru on a pedestal and worshiping him for a few years following the political independence of India. But to keep electing his entire brood of incompetent descendants whose policies have deepened poverty, divided the country on caste and religious lines, and generally made life hell for nearly all Indians, is the height of folly. Being fooled repeatedly by the same party should be a matter of extreme shame. No one needs to be so persistently stupid and gullible. Indians should collectively do what the Hindi saying advices — chullu bhar pani mein doob maro.

I have spoken to people who have had the opportunity to observe Rahul Gandhi at close quarters. A journalist friend of mine spent three days with him during the last general elections. She confided in me saying, “He’s an OK guy. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s definitely slow on the uptake, to be honest. Despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he has little to show for himself. He does not have the intellectual horsepower to manage a road-side restaurant. He’d fail at that. Yet he may get to follow the footsteps of his father, his grandmother, and his great grandfather and lead India further into poverty. It’s a crying shame that he’s even in the running for the PM’s job in a country with 1.2 billion people.”

For years I have been saying that the quality of Indian leadership should make us weep and keep us awake at night not so much because the leaders are generally incompetent, lying, myopic, immoral and unethical — which evidently they are — but because the character of the Indian leaders is a sure indication of the character of Indian voters. Our choices, big and small, reveal our character powerfully and unequivocally. We show who we are by choosing who are leaders are to be.

If one believes in the theory that one’s past lives’ karma dictate one’s fortune in the current life, one would have to conclude that in their past lives Indians must have accumulated pretty horrendous bad karma. I don’t believe in the past life thing but I do believe in the theory that we produce our own karma in this very life — and then we and our children pay for our misdeeds.

It is time Indians did a bit of honest soul-searching and for once decide not to vote for morally and ethically challenged politicians. But I am not sanguine about that prospect. Carl Sagan in his important book The Demon-Haunted World pointed out that—

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

We have been bamboozled for too long. But it is time to stop being so self-destructive. Most of all, I wish we would not vote for village idiots, regardless of how shiny their pedigree. We must get our power back.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111272015-02-07T14:18:45Z2015-02-07T14:18:45ZContinue reading →]]>Kiran Bedi is funny. Unintentionally of course. Here’s why. (Click on the image below to get to the tweet.)

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So 2400 hours, instead of just 24 hours? Is that the total number of hours that Delhi will have electricity? And if so, total for how many years?

That reminds me of one of Steven Wrights jokes.

I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’

I like his humor. He points out the obvious. For example, “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.” Or, “It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.” More of his insanity here.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=107172015-02-10T17:33:09Z2015-02-04T00:33:57ZContinue reading →]]>Let me tell you a story. It is about a friend who is building a school in India. Motivated by idealism to do something for India, some years ago he decided that he would build an excellent K-12 school. An expatriate for a few years in a developed nation, he thought it was time for him to “give back” something to his native land. Knowing of my interest in education, he asked me to advise him and I did as a friend without any pecuniary interest in the venture. I kept in touch. Just the other day he called me from India to tell me how things were going. Here’s what I heard. It is both instructive and depressing.
For around five years, Krishna (not his real name) has been busy building his school on the outskirts of a major Indian city. His aim was to educate students who would be able to meet the challenges of the modern world. Which is to say that he wanted the children to become capable of living and working in a rapidly changing world, a task that is not addressed by the overwhelming majority of Indian schools which operate on assumptions that have long become irrelevant. Putting his own savings in it and having persuaded his extended family members to invest in his venture, he got started on the arduous task of building a K-12 school from scratch.

It isn’t easy to convey the hard work that Krishna put into building the school. Land acquisition itself, to put it mildly, is a task that only the truly deluded or the supremely politically well-connected would undertake. But he did it by hook or by crook. Crook is the right word: the crooked deals involved in the otherwise simple matter of buying land is hard to comprehend for anyone who has not tried doing so in India. You’d imagine that it would be an uncomplicated transaction between a seller and a buyer. Not so. It involves the government, even though the government is neither the owner of the land nor the buyer. And that is the key to the rest of the story that I am about to tell: the government as a party to any deal in India.

There are literally hundreds of pages of rules and regulations. But it isn’t just rules that you understand and abide by. There are permissions to be obtained. There is a distinction between rules and permissions. India is a permissions based government. If it were merely rules, you would just consult the rules and do accordingly. But it is a matter of permissions. You have to obtain permission before you do something. And that is where bureaucratic discretion enters the picture. You have to obtain permissions from various institutions of the government — all of which involve some kind of side payment or the other.

Now the fact is that “the government” is an abstraction. In reality, there is no such thing. What is called the government is in practice a collection of individuals. People constitute the government. They are in charge of granting permissions. These are the people who hand out permissions without which you cannot move a muscle in India. For these individuals control (that’s the control of the “permit-quota-control” raj of India) is the operative word. They are in control and they permit you to do things at their pleasure. And their pleasure always involves a payoff.

Anything you do in India, or attempt to do, involves permissions from various governmental entities. And each permission involves some government official, an individual who has the power to deny you that permission that is required by law. They grant permissions based on how much you are willing to pay, and that depends on how desperate you are to get that permission. The larger the project, the bigger the payoff.

One morning a government bureaucrat shows up at the school. They are minor potentates in the Indian civil services. That structure was put in place by the British. During the British Raj, it was called the “Indian Civil Services”. When the British left India (note, the British left; they were not driven out), the new rulers — the brown skinned new rulers — changed the name to “Indian Administrative Services”, or IAS, but the function remained exactly as under the British Raj. It was British Raj 2.0. The natives were still serfs but it was subjugation by brown-skinned people. Anyway, let’s get on with our story.

Krishna had obtained many permissions, of course with suitable off the record payments to various government officials. Work on the school was progressing albeit slowly. But there always is something or the other that a government official could point to from among the hundreds of pages of rules and regulations. The bureaucrat demanded a pay-off or else he would shut down the work.

Krishna was at his wit’s end. He called up an influential politician one of the kids in Krishna’s school was related to. The politician ordered the bureaucrat to back off. In the permit-control-quota raj of India, what matters is who you know and you have to fight fire with fire — even if that fire could eventually burn you. You get protection from a mafia boss by appealing to an even bigger mafia boss.

We need not go into the details of the various problems that Krishna is facing in just running a school. Suffice it to say that there are easier way to make oneself miserable than fighting almost impossible odds. The government places hurdles to getting things done.

I wrote “the government places hurdles.” Let me unpack that. As I said before, “the government” is an abstraction which in reality is composed of people — ordinary people just like you and me. And just like you and me, these people are neither sociopaths nor psychopaths who disregard others’ rights or are devoid of a sense of what’s right or wrong, or of basic morality and decency. They don’t wake up in the morning with an evil glint in their eyes, intent on making others’ lives as miserable as they can.

What they are motivated by is plain old-fashioned self-interest. They want to get as much as they possibly can using the system that they are part of. The harm they cause is rarely intentional. The devastation and the destruction they cause is not their primary motive. They don’t intend the misery they cause. It is a by-product, a side-effect. I am certain that they would rather have others not suffer as a consequence of their actions. But their self-interest over-rides.

When I see the venal politicians make policies that enrich them and impoverish the country, I have to remind myself that they are not actually in the business of starving the poor. What they are mainly interested in is their own wealth, and the poverty they necessarily cause is not what they intend. They would rather that the poor didn’t have to suffer but since their gain is at the expense of the poor, the politicians are powerless to alter the outcome of the zero-sum (or even negative-sum) game.

As I mentioned before, I am convinced that most of the politicians are not sociopaths. They are rationally self-interested, just like you and I. What distinguishes them from us is that they have the kind of control that allows them to enrich themselves so immensely that they are unable to resist the temptation. Truth be told, if I did lust after billions of dollars (I don’t) and I had the opportunity to steal it from others (I don’t), I am not sure that I would not do the same thing. I cannot make a virtue of not doing something that I am neither inclined to do nor I have the opportunity to do.

I don’t know how the story of Krishna’s school will end. Perhaps he will be able to run the school, or perhaps he will acknowledge defeat and give up eventually. If he does give up, it would be a whole lot of wasted years and a cautionary tale for others. People are rational and can read the writing on the wall: that it is a fool’s errand to try to run schools in India.

The statistics about the Indian education system makes for really depressing reading. Most of the government run primary schools don’t provide education. Whatever is spent on them goes to waste. The majority of the students drop out before reaching high school and only a small minority graduate high school. Of these, a minority go on to college education. Then of the college graduates, only one out of four is employable.

The rich work around the scarcity of good colleges in India by sending their kids to study aboard. Time was when kids would go abroad mostly for post-graduate college education but now that is changing: the level at which kids are being sent abroad by the rich is gradually coming down. A few decades ago, I came to the US to get a PhD. I’d never heard of anyone going to the US for undergraduate studies. Then around the mid-90s, people started sending their kids to the US for undergraduate studies. And now they are sending kids abroad for high school.

Indians are not congenitally stupid. They are quite capable of getting things done. Creating schools and colleges is well within the capacity of Indians. The fact that the Indian education system is so worthless cannot be explained by the incompetence of people; it can only be explained by the fact that the government has a stranglehold on the system. Why would the government do that? Because of simple economics.

The economics of monopoly control explains the problem with India’s education system parsimoniously. If you want to make super-normal profits (what economists call “rents”), you cannot get it in a competitive market. You have to restrict entry of suppliers in the market and become the monopolistic supplier. Competition within the market always erodes rents. To capture the rents, the government can effectively shift competition within the market to competition for the market. Entry barriers is one way to effect this.

The government has entry barriers, major and minor. In essence, entry can be obtained by bribing the government. This reduces competition within the market and shifts the competition to “for the market.” One ex-chief minister of a major state of India is particularly infamous for controlling all entry into the education sector in the state and is reputed to have amassed a fortune valued at tens of billions of dollars. The high prices people have to pay to get a seat even in a worthless college in the state ends up in part in that man’s pocket. Rationally, therefore, some people make the decision to send their kids abroad if they can afford it.

Entry barriers guarantee low quality and high prices. Where there are no entry barriers, competition within the market guarantees a range of prices commensurate with quality and adequate supply. It also guarantees the absence of rents. These aspects of competitive markets make it particularly unattractive to the politicians. Rents are attractive to those who control. In this case, the politicians do the controlling and therefore collect the rents. That leads to high prices. Then there is the additional feature of a controlled market: low supply. When the supply is low, the politicians can ration out the limited supply to various favored groups in exchange for political support. This is where the caste- and religion-based quotas come into play. Naturally this is bad for the people as it fractures society along caste and religious lines. But it is good for the politicians.

The story is broadly simple. The constitution mandates the government involvement in the education sector. This is of course justified on the spurious grounds that education is a very critical sector and therefore the people cannot be trusted free-entry into providing that service. Government involvement in the sector politicizes education. The politicization of education corrupts the sector. In the end, the people suffer while the politicians enjoy the fruits of office.

The Modi government wants foreigners to invest and “Make in India.” Why would they want to make in India when people in India themselves are not allowed to make in India? I cannot fathom the logic of preventing Indians from doing things and then attempting to persuade outsiders to please do their business in India. It is time that the government removes all barriers to entry into the education sector. That will have the salutary effect of making education in India, lowering prices and raising quality. It will also save India a lot of foreign exchange that is lost to schools abroad. That will make India into a place where you won’t have to do a song and dance about “Make in India.”

Will it happen? I don’t think so. It is too lucrative a business for the government to give up.

]]>11Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=111062015-01-26T03:04:24Z2015-01-25T23:32:53ZContinue reading →]]>January 26th, 2015 is the 66th “Republic Day” of India: the Constitution of India came into force on this day in 1950 as the supreme law of the land, replacing the Government of India Act of 1935. I doubt that very many Indians actually know what the Republic Day has to do with the constitution. If you doubt that, ask a few Indians what’s celebrated.

To most, it is just a holiday with parades, patriotic songs and the same old politicians pontificating on television. Constitution? Well, we don’t worry about that. But we need to because the constitution matters. In a very strict sense, it is the most important institution that determines the fortunes of the state. It does so by constraining what laws politicians can enact, and therefore constrains public policies. Public policies matter in determining strongly national prosperity. A bad constitution guarantees a dysfunctional state. It’s time for people to read the constitution, understand it, and ponder whether it has lived up to its frequently advertised greatness.
One of my favorite hobby horses is my claim that, to a first approximation, nobody in India has actually read the Indian constitution. I base this on a sample of around 10,000 people I have asked over the last decade. It was not a random sample: these people were quite adequately educated, they were interested in India’s economic growth and development, and were interested in and followed Indian politics. If this bunch has not read the constitution, it is a fair bet that a vanishingly small number have read the constitution cover to cover.

A very small number admitted that they had read bits and pieces of it because it was required for some school course work. A few attempted to read it but gave up when it became clear that it was basically unreadable. It is written in legalese. It is incomprehensible to the general public. My education has not been too shabby — and I admit that I failed in my sincere attempt to read it.

The Indian Constitution is verbose. India has the world’s largest constitution, containing 117,369 words. (Did you know that only three modern countries in the world don’t have written constitutions: UK, New Zealand and Israel. BBC.) That’s around 500 pages. Little wonder that no one has read it.

What worries me is this: the constitution is the foundation document of the republic. A republic is a form of popular government. That means people are the ultimate rulers and their elected representative govern the state on behalf of the people according to the law of the land. The law of the land is the constitution. Now if the people don’t know what’s in the constitution, at best they are blindly guessing what the law of the land is. But let’s put aside the people for a moment. What about the legislators of the land, the elected politicians? Do they know the law of the land?

I don’t know too many politicians but the handful that I do know have readily and without shame baldly stated that they have not read the constitution. These people were not the illiterate, uneducated variety either. So if they had not read it, I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that not a single politician in India has read the constitution.

If that is so, I don’t understand what business they have to go about making laws when they don’t know what the constitution says.

Here’s an idea that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi could consider. Require that all legislators read the constitution. Every member of the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha, the state legislators — every last one of them. And to ensure that there’s no shirking, I propose that the constitution should be read out to them. In just 20 hours, it can be read aloud. And at the end of it all, they will have to appear for test, the results of which would be on public record.

This will have one important effect: these people will fully understand that the constitution is unreadable and incomprehensible. It might provoke public debate about what needs to be done about it. I am on record calling for the replacement of the constitution of India. No, not amendments but an actual re-writing of the constitution.

This proposal of mine will of course not be adopted — it’s too rational and simple. We don’t do the rational thing and simplicity is for simpletons. We are really smart. We must be: haven’t you seen the kind of unparalleled prosperity we enjoy?

Seriously though, we need to demand sanity from the politicians. Politicians drafted the constitution and like they usually do, they make laws that are incomprehensible. We need to make them suffer for them to recognize that India must have a decent, comprehensible constitution.

I had been turning over this idea in my head for a while. To my delight, I came across a related idea in a Jan 15th blog post by Dan Bunting, “A British version of a ‘Read the Bills’ statute.” As Dan notes, “Read the Bill Act” is promoted by Rand Paul “that every member of Congress who votes on a bill has to sign a sworn declaration that they have read it.” In the blog post, Dan posted this tweet by Matthew Bolt:

It’s genius. Imagine if no MP or peer could vote on a Bill unless they had lodged a handwritten (in their own writing) copy of the entire Bill with the Clerk of the House?

That piece of legislation that looked so good, and so just vital for the country, in the early morning light of a press release, may not look quite so hot at two in the morning as you are bent over a desk, hand cramped, as you write out Clause 94? Any lawyer can tell you that it is almost impossible to keep on top of the outpouring of laws from Westminster.

Well, that’s it. Require that every Indian legislator sit through a reading of the constitution, and at the end of it pass a written test administered by an independent agency. And post the results for the public to see how well their law makers know the law.

]]>6Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110632015-01-24T04:52:42Z2015-01-23T20:31:54ZContinue reading →]]>India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
– Will Durant. 1885-1981. American writer, historian, philosopher.

The first bit of news I got today through twitter was that Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister of the Islamic State of Pakistan had declared a day of national mourning and ordered the Pakistani flag to be flown at half mast because the king of Saudi Arabia died. Typical, I said to myself. A beggar state like Pakistan has to acknowledge the debt it owes to its benefactor state. Pakistan gets life-support from the Saudis. And support for its death-dealing terrorism that it routinely directs at India. It has to kowtow, beg, grovel, bow and scrape before its masters. And as one would expect, now it has to ostentatiously beat its breast and loudly weep like a penniless widow. Self-respect is a luxury that beggars cannot afford. Too many Pakistanis are wannabe Arabs. I felt sorry for Pakistan and I admit that I gloated a little bit. It would never happen in India, I told myself.
Then to my horror I read on twitter that India too had declared a day of national mourning. That is when I realized the full shame of what India has been reduced to by its poverty. There’s material poverty of course but what’s worse is the poverty of principles, of morals and ethics. India is what is known as a “third world” country but that label is merely a recognition of its global alliances, not a value judgment of its intrinsic worth. But that India has become a “third rate” nation is a value judgement. India definitely appears to lack the courage of its convictions. It does not project moral or ethical leadership when it joins the likes of Pakistan in groveling before people who fund Islamic terrorism.

You were wrong, Mr Durant.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is arguably an evil state. It funds global Islamic terrorism. It is particularly vicious in its hatred of Hindus, the idol worshiping kuffars. India is the most tragic victims of the Saudi funded terrorism. That terrorism is a direct consequence of the Saudi funding and promotion of Wahhabism, the fountainhead of global terrorism. Saudi funding of Islamic extremism in India is both direct through the funding of innumerable mosques, and indirect by funding Pakistani terrorists whose primary target is India, particularly the “kuffars.” These are well-established and well-known facts that only the severely deluded or the incorrigibly stupid can be ignorant of. The Modi-led NDA government of India cannot be excused for what it has done: declared a day of national mourning following the death of the king Abdullah of Saudi Arabia today Jan 23rd.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a tyrannical, repressive, regressive, intolerant, totalitarian, xenophobic and unspeakably cruel state. Its ruling Saudi family represents all those anti-human and anti-freedom values. Its ideology is as far from being enlightened as it is possible to be and still be in the contemporary world. Public beheadings and flogging is routine. Not the most egregious of its system of justice, the on-going flogging of blogger Raif Badawi is enough to turn the stomach of the most hardened cynic.

Badawi, 31, was sentenced last May to 10 years’ imprisonment and 1,000 lashes – 50 at a time over 20 weeks – and fined 1m Saudi riyals (£175,000). He has been held since mid-2012, and his Free Saudi Liberals website, established to encourage debate on religious and political matters in Saudi Arabia, is closed. He received his first 50 lashes on 9 January, but the punishment was not carried out a week later. [Source: The Guardian.]

The planned flogging of the second week was postponed because they had to behead a woman.

A Burmese woman has been publicly beheaded in the holy city of Mecca, sparking condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, who resided in Saudi Arabia, was dragged through the street and held down by four police officers as she was executed by sword on Monday (12 January).

The woman had been convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.

She was struck three times with the sword as she protested her innocence screaming: “I did not kill. I did not kill.”

The execution was videoed and has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content.” [Source: International Business Times.]

I am absolutely horrified by the unspeakable cruelty of the regime of the King of Saudi Arabia. Did I tell you that Saudi Arabia is a horror of a country? Let me repeat that. It follows sharia, the Islamic legal system which mandates beheading for these crimes:

There are many different ways in which an execution may be carried out. The sentence for Apostacy, or the repentance of one’s faith, is a public beheading, while the sentence for Adultery is death by stoning.
. . .
A public beheading will typically take place around 9am. The convicted person is walked into the square and kneels in front of the executioner. The executioner uses a sword known as a sulthan to remove the condemned person’s head from his or her body at the neck. Sometimes it may take several strikes before victim is decapitated. After the criminal is pronounced dead, a loudspeaker announces the crimes committed by the beheaded alleged criminal and the process is complete. This is the most common method of execution in Saudi Arabia because it is specifically called for by Sharia Law. Professional executioners behead as many as ten people in a single day. The severed head is usually sewn back on, and sometimes put on crucifixes for public display. In 2011, an Indonesian maid’s dead body was hung from a helicopter for display.

Saudi Arabia funds mosques in India. You cannot even carry the non-Islamic sacred literature into Saudi Arabia, leave alone building any kind of non-Islamic place of worship.

By all accounts, Saudi Arabia is a horrible place. And it is reflection of its totalitarian leaders.

I am appalled by PM Narendra Modi’s decision to declare a national day of mourning on King Abdullah’s death. That’s saying something since it takes quite a lot to get me riled up. Does not Modi know that Saudi Arabia must have sent tens of millions of dollars for actively campaigning against the BJP and in all probability (at least indirectly) funded Islamic terrorists to assassinate him?

The man who died presided over an inhuman system. He was someone who should be shunned, not celebrated. And Shri Modi declares a day of national mourning for the death of a man who was India’s enemy? I would have expected this “mourning” bullshit from the spineless toady, the despicably dishonest Dr MM Singh. But from Shri Narendra Modi? Did I say I am appalled? I am shocked, saddened and disgusted.

I feel ashamed for Shri Modi, his government and for Indians. India has been diminished, Indians have been diminished and Mr Modi has belittled himself. Yes indeed a national day of mourning for India but not for the reasons of the death of a tyrant.

Let us all weep tears of bitter pain for the country that is so diminished.

]]>11Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110412015-01-22T22:13:05Z2015-01-22T22:13:05ZContinue reading →]]>The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. ― HL Mencken

And usually these troublemakers are the ones who need to be muzzled through suppression of speech and expression.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110452015-01-24T02:18:50Z2015-01-22T04:28:11ZContinue reading →]]>I was talking today to a friend in Boston who was recently in India for the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Non-resident Indian Day) in Gandhinagar. He reported that it was the worst managed PBD he’d seen in his 15 years of attending the event. Among his other observations, he noted that some of the states are trying their best to attract investment from within and outside India. But, he said, he was distressed to see how poorly his ancestral state of West Bengal was doing. Nothing at all is happening there and it appears to be in terminal decline. I said that that’s too bad but I could have told you that decades ago. Have you been following the news about Venezuela, I asked. No, he replied. I pointed him to a Jan 13th Forbes article: The Impending Collapse Of Venezuela.
Venezuela is having a hard time. It has a balance of payments problem, made worse by the falling gas prices. And there are shortages of consumer goods. Here are a few lines from that article:

Shortages are nothing new in Venezuela. Indeed, a shortage of toilet paper has been the subject of global amusement for quite some time. But recently, the shortages have become much worse. Last week, a government official was jeered for saying that long lines indicated that “Venezuela has plenty of food”, when rows and rows of empty shelves in stores were telling a different story. Bloomberg reports that people are queueing overnight for necessities such as soap, milk and diapers. This is very dangerous. Venezuela is already one of the most violent societies on earth. And when shortages start to affect little children, people get angry.

Fearful of public unrest escalating into something more serious, the government has now deployed troops to control queues of disgruntled shoppers at the country’s half-empty stores. And it has introduced a system of rationing, limiting shoppers to two days per week at government-controlled stores. As Bloomberg cynically put it, “Venezuela reduces lines by trimming shoppers, not shortages”.
. . .Over the last fifteen years, the Venezuelan government has nationalized hundreds of companies and seized assets on a massive scale. . . . Often, these nationalizations have come in response to falling production due to government price and exchange controls. For example, production in Venezuela’s car industry dropped by 85% between January 2013 and January 2014: in February 2014, Toyota suspended production for six weeks citing inability to import parts, resulting in calls from trades unions for the industry to be nationalized. All too often, the Venezuelan government has given in to such calls, rather than addressing the underlying problems.

Widespread nationalization of private enterprises and seizure of assets discourages both domestic entrepreneurialism and foreign investment, and nationalized companies too often end up less efficient and less productive than they were when in private hands. The Venezuelan government has mismanaged its nationalized oil industry, resulting in revenues far below what would reasonably be expected from its vast oil reserves, and misallocated those disappointing revenues into the bargain: instead of using the revenues to diversify its economy and develop domestic production in other sectors, it has diverted them into politically popular but unproductive social programs and distortionary price controls and subsidies. Consequently, Venezuela has become far too dependent on oil revenues, its fiscal finances are in a parlous state and its industry is highly inefficient. It was in a mess long before the present fall in oil prices. [Emphasis added.]

The keywords are shortages, nationalization, asset seizure, rationing, government control, falling production, price and exchange controls, discouraging entrepreneurialism, mismanagement of resources, misallocation of assets. All these are defining features of a socialist economy. And lead to predictably distressing outcomes for the citizens of socialist economies.

These are predictable for analytical reasons alone and the empirical evidence only adds to the argument that socialism is the surest road to impoverishment, decay and decline. Pure reason can tell anyone that socialism cannot but wreak havoc. Yet they do it. Who are these “they” that choose socialism? They are the policymakers, the leaders of socialistic states. But why?

They — the leaders — do it because socialism is good for them. Socialism is as certainly good for the leaders as they are bad for the society. That’s the irony: socialism is bad for society as a whole. It is good for those who get to call the shots because they become rich. But it immiserizes the rest. Indeed the immiserization of society is guaranteed by the very fact that a select few can get very rich only at the expense of the many. Socialism is a zero-sum game: the leaders’ gain is the society’s loss. This is in sharp contrast to the other way of organizing society: the market system.

In the market system, the game is positive sum instead of a zero sum game. In any market exchange, no one’s gain is at the expense of another’s loss. In voluntary exchange, both parties necessarily must win because otherwise they would not enter into the exchange. A market system is one in which there is no coercion and all trades occur between consenting parties that enter into the transaction voluntarily. Add up all those positive sums that innumerable trades give rise to and you end up with social welfare increases that no participant actually intends to promote. No one intends to promote social welfare but by merely engaging in their self-interested trades, they collectively promote the greater good.

Socialism works — but only in the limited context of a very small group, usually a family. Within a family of closely related persons, socialism works because of two reasons: first, people genuinely care for the others’ welfare; and second, the people doing the allocation of resources have the necessary information. When people genuinely care, they don’t cheat, steal or do things that benefit them at the expense of the others. The information requirement is also easily met: the parents (the leaders of the small socialist state of the nuclear family) know who needs what and who is capable of doing what. All transactions occur between people who know each other well.

But in any large economy — large in the sense that people are strangers to each other — the conditions under which socialism works are not met. Nearly all exchanges are done between strangers, and therefore there are enough opportunities for “opportunistic” behavior and there is not enough information about who needs what and who is capable of doing what.

But then the question is: why then do leaders who loudly proclaim that they are only interested in the social good ever go in for socialism? The simple answer is of course because they personally gain. Ask yourself: if you had the opportunity of becoming immensely wealthy at the expense of an unknown number of anonymous people who would never know that you gained at their expense, and who could not do anything to retaliate, would you be tempted to go for it?

If your answer is “no”, I congratulate you on your character and integrity. But you will agree with me that there are people who would go for it. And these are precisely those people who claw their way up to the top to become leaders — and end up choosing socialism. Those who get to the top choose socialism if they had the opportunity to do so. And the opportunity is usually given to them by the people — the victims of socialism — themselves provided they are sufficiently stupid.

I make no apologies for using the word “stupid.” We are all stupid — to varying degrees. What’s worse, we are ignorant too. Present company not excepted.

West Bengal has had communist governments for decades. Communism or socialism was not imposed. The people of West Bengal, in their collective stupidity, chose to vote for those governments. The leaders chose policies that ended up in the economic mess they are in now and are guaranteed to impoverish them further.

It is all karma, neh?

You does your actions and you reaps your rewards. It’s inescapable. The rewards of socialism is poverty. Persistent collective poverty and misery. Like what they are suffering in Venezuela. Like what the people in West Bengal have come to regard as normal.

My friend said that India is a socialist country. Apparently it is not doing too badly. This is a common refrain. “India is on its way to a super power.” Really? You could have fooled me.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110292015-01-12T20:06:35Z2015-01-12T18:22:42ZContinue reading →]]>The article title in Businessweek is “Why People Kill People Over Satire.” But the URL reads “Why the terrorists killed the satirists of Charlie Hebdo in Paris.” Curious, isn’t it? The article title generalizes too much, watering down the particular. Sure, Islamic terrorists are terrorists, and certainly terrorists are people. So one can substitute use the general “people” instead of the particular “Islamic terrorists.” The title of the article is overly general, the URL is somewhere along the middle, and the particularized question that needs answering is “Why do only Islamic terrorists kill people over satire these days?”
But that specific particularized question is hard even to ask, leave alone answer these days. Ask and be instantly branded “Islamophobic.” Only those who have immense cojones — such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali — are brave and honest enough to address the specific. Anyway, so Eric Roston asks why people kill people over satire. He quotes Steven Pinker as part of the explanation:

We’re told we respond to threats in one of two ways: fight or flight. There is a third response: the laughter reflex. That’s our way of standing down without running away, or of standing up without really fighting. Greece had Aristophanes. Kings had their fools. France has Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo does satire, and satire is weaponized humor. It’s an evolutionary tool that people who are neither in power nor armed can use to reduce the stature of the mighty — or, like radical Islam, the grandiose. It identifies something undignified, corrupt or otherwise low-status about the powerful or sacred, says Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of several popular science books.

As soon as that happens, laughter automatically ripples through those in the crowd who agree. Simply by hearing and reflexively understanding the joke, a listener acknowledges that the satirist’s target is asking for it.

And that laughter doesn’t mean just that the listeners understand the satire, Pinker says. It means they understand that everyone else understands it.

So it’s an epiphany, instantly transforming the common knowledge that holds communities together, the foundation of social order. In a blink, the emperor has no clothes.

JANE HUTCHEON: Ever since 9/11, the Western world, as you call it, has spent a lot of money on security, we’ve gone to war, there have been wars and yet the problem still persists. What practical measures do you advocate that Western governments, including France and Australia, can undertake?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: If we acknowledge that there is an infrastructure of indoctrination into the young hearts and minds, hearts and minds that are vulnerable, that are impressionable, of young men – mostly young men, but also of women, and that we have allowed this infrastructure to seed in the West and to thrive; if we come to terms with the fact that this is and has been going on for a long time, that we need to dismantle – you asked for practical solutions. We need to dismantle this infrastructure of indoctrination and replace it, replace it with an infrastructure where we inculcate into the minds and hearts of young people an ideology or ideas of life, love, peace, tolerance.

JANE HUTCHEON: As you know, in the wake of the Paris attacks, the media has been showing solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. In your view, do you feel the media in the past years has been self-censoring and will it continue to self-censor?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: You are still continuing to self-censor because you have not published or republished cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. You have not honoured Charlie Hebdo the way they need to be honoured, which is they took a risk, they took a risk to stand up for the core values of Western civilisation. And you, the media, are letting them down. You have drawn and published caricatures of the terrorists, but you have not published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

JANE HUTCHEON: Can I ask you how much of these events – what happened in Sydney, the Paris attacks – how much of this is due to the power vacuum in Syria?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: Look, this – the idea of the Islamists, the idea that they can bring the world down through terrorism, among other means, to believe that sharia is the way and the only way that human beings can live, that idea is so much older than what is going on in Syria and what is going on in Iraq.

I have added emphasis in the quoted bit above. Islamic terrorism began in the 7th century CE, under the warlord Mohammed. It’s not new. The Americans think that it began on “9/11.” More likely it began on 9/11 of 675 CE, or some such year.

Anyway, here’s Bill Maher in conversation with Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy starts off with “people were killed by people” and Bill sets him straight. “Muslim terrorists.” :

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110162015-01-10T02:17:43Z2015-01-10T02:11:04ZContinue reading →]]>The phrase “Islamic terrorism” is actually one word too long since almost all modern-day terrorism is Islamic and the adjective is entirely superfluous. Why Islam specializes in this form of warfare is not hard to understand — because violence and aggression is ultimately the only weapon left to those who don’t have any other means of engaging with others. This engagement has become so tiresomely commonplace that we have come to accept it as a normal feature of modern life. It is hard to imagine but there was a time when you didn’t have to surrender your bottle of water or take off your shoes before boarding a flight. Now you have to surrender not just liquids but also your dignity under the intrusion of full-body scanners as we go about such mundane and innocuous activities as taking a flight.
I am afraid that things are going to get much worse before they get any better. Just the other day, only a day before the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a friend and I were wondering when will the world fully recognize what Islam is about. No, Islamic terrorism is not a threat. That horse has bolted. A threat is something that is threatened but has not yet materialized. Islam is terrorizing, not threatening to terrorize. If that was not bad enough, the movers and shakers — the so-called leaders of the so-called free world — are getting away with not facing this reality. One simple reason is that they themselves are well-protected and are unlikely to suffer the fate that ordinary folks — like the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo — face. Anyone who stands up to Islam’s aggression is likely to be mowed down by its Kalashnikov-wielding faithful.

“It might sound a bit pompous to say so but I’d rather die standing up than live on my knees.” That’s what Stéphane Charbonnier of Charlie Hebdo had said on record at an interview in 2012. He died standing in front of his cold-blooded Islamic murderers. He paid with his life for his principles. The leaders don’t appear to have much by way of principles and therefore I suppose they will not have to pay any price, however little. They get to free-ride on the blood of the courageous few who have the spine to stand up to Islamic bullying.

Unfortunately the leaders of the non-Islamic world appear to be in agreement with the leaders of the Islamic world that non-Muslims must live on their knees in front of their Islamic overlords. This attitude is regrettably across the board: from the leaders of powerful nations like the US, Germany, UK, France, etc., to the leaders of poor nations like Pakistan, India, Somalia, Afghanistan, etc.

What will it take to wake up those people? It appears to me that Islam is safe from any serious criticism — leave alone military confrontation — as long as it confines its killing to a few dozens in the Western world, and a few tens of thousands in the rest of the world. Perhaps the day is not far when the terrorists, emboldened by their successes and encouraged by their Leftist apologists, will up the ante and go for murdering a few hundred thousand in a Western country. A dirty bomb would fit the bill quite nicely. Perhaps that will wake up the world and perhaps then will it get serious about wiping that ideology off the face of the earth. I suppose only when Westerners die by the hundreds of thousands will the people revolt against their leaders and only then will the civilized world destroy that evil ideology just like it did to Nazism.

The people of the world — non-Muslims and Muslims alike — have suffered for centuries from Islam. I think enough is enough. It is time to stop that suffering.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=110032015-01-07T02:00:39Z2015-01-07T02:00:39ZContinue reading →]]>I have always been suspicious of what has become almost conventional wisdom that there is something called the “wisdom of the crowd.” It is generally interpreted to mean that the collective somehow knows what is not knowable by any individual. That notion is one of the motivating factors that recommends democracy to some. I disagree: I think the crowd collectively does not “know” since the act of knowing applies to individuals and not to abstract collectives. (Actually, it is superfluous to write “abstract collectives” since there are no other kinds of collectives; all collectives are abstractions.) Each individual knows something but those particularized “knowings” cannot be meaningfully aggregated to something that can be called the “knowledge of the crowds” or some such.
In any case, I interpret the “wisdom of the crowd” to mean that individuals in the crowd have different understanding of any particular matter and therefore some particular individual knows the best (however defined) about it. That bit is axiomatic and does not need further elaboration. What does need stressing is that ex ante we don’t know who among the crowd is the one who knows best regarding that particular matter. If everyone among the crowd has the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding, we (not collectively but as individuals each making our own judgement) could recognize ex post who knows best.

That is one of the many reasons why liberty and freedom of the individual is important. Liberty for people to demonstrate their understanding (through their actions of course), and the liberty for people to assess for themselves the actions of others. Since nobody knows a priori what or who is best, the most we can do is to have the liberty to explore the space of possibilities and then choose what to accept. Freedom is instrumental in this venture. Hayek makes the case for freedom with his characteristic elegant eloquence:

If there were omniscient men, if we could know not only all that affects the attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires, there would be little case for liberty. And, in turn, liberty of the individual would, of course, make complete foresight impossible. Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable; we want it because we have learned to expect from it the opportunity of realizing many of our aims. It is because every individual knows so little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it. [Source: The Case for Freedom. Oct 1960.]

Go read that essay very seriously. You’ll be much wiser than the crowd. (I should take this opportunity to plug another book that I think all smart people should read — Gustave Le Bon’s THE CROWD: A STUDY OF THE POPULAR MIND. 1896.)

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=109872015-01-09T05:17:17Z2015-01-05T03:46:08ZContinue reading →]]>It takes a long time and sustained effort to learn a subject, to understand the basics, to appreciate its complexity. At some time in this often arduous journey one usually arrives at the point where one begins to understand the immensity of the subject and how ignorant one is about it. Expertise is accompanied with an acceptance that one is now in full view of one’s ignorance. No one is as acutely aware of his own ignorance as the expert.
We are limited beings and comprehensive knowledge is denied to us. At best, given the right circumstances and the right capabilities, we get a glimpse of what lies out there. At best, we can learn a bit about some severely circumscribed aspect of reality. The most important lesson we learn is that we are really don’t know it all. We don’t really know much about anything compared to what is potentially knowable.

So we learn to appreciate our ignorance of the subject when we attain some degree of proficiency in the subject. This is denied to those who have not attained a certain degree of expertise in any specific topic. To those who have put in the effort of mastering (to a certain degree) a subject, it becomes possible for them to appreciate that they themselves are totally ignorant of the innumerable other subjects. Learning any subject well teaches humility.

This I think is one of the more important lessons one learns as one learns any subject deeply: that comprehensive understanding is not possible and therefore we are stripped of the fatal conceit that we know what is good, true and moral. Only the ignorant can maintain and entertain the illusion of knowledge; those who know know that they don’t know.

The knowledge of their ignorance is not available to the ignorant. First order ignorance is not knowing something; second order ignorance is not knowing that one one is ignorant, that one does not know.

Therefore I think that anyone in any position of power should learn some subject deeply. People in positions of power must study some aspect of reality in some detail so that they develop the appreciation of ignorance. If they don’t, they mistakenly believe that they know whatever there is to be known. Their conceit and their hubris is a side-effect, a natural consequence, of their inability to appreciate that they really don’t know.

It really does not matter what the subject is as long as it is some aspect of reality ( and not some pseudo subject like astrology or palmistry.) One can study history, or psychology, or high energy physics, or anthropology — or even economics. At some stage of their intellectual development, the person will realize that their limited understanding is all that they are capable of. And thus come to understand that they are totally and irremediably ignorant of all the other subjects. This realization will prevent their falling into the trap, the fatal conceit, that they can rely on their own understanding. Then they will become capable of seeking the advice of those who know.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know enough about economics to appreciate how little I know of economics. I have waded far enough from the shore into the waters to appreciate that the ocean must be very deep–a realization denied to those who have not dipped their toes into the ocean. Most of the people I meet are non-economists and I am often surprised (although I should not be) that they really don’t know the first thing about economics. However I do marvel at how convinced they are about how the economy works and how it should be managed.

These kinds of encounters have a salutary effect on me. I realize that just as they don’t know about economics, my ignorance of all the thousands of other areas of study must also be very profound. I know something and that helps me understand that I don’t know much about many other important things.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In India — and in many other countries in a similar state of development — politicians are chosen by some democratic process. These political leaders are generally not educated in any subject area. They gain their position merely because they are good at getting elected, based on positions they take on matters that concern the electorate.

Given that they have not had any meaningful training in any area of human knowledge and inquiry, they are almost completely incapable of appreciating how ignorant they are. They believe they know it all. And that’s where all trouble begins. They could take the advice of those who know but they are incapable of even entertaining the idea that they need advice and counsel.

I know this is a crazy idea but I think that aside from the usual conditions such as being of sound mind and being above a certain age to be a candidate for high office, one of the conditions should be that one has attained a degree (PhD, perhaps) in some subject from some reputable institution.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I think of Shri Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The man was a consummate politician. Lawyer by training, he did not have deep knowledge of any subject. Not knowing enough, he could easily slip into the delusion that he knew it all and therefore could command obedience from all on all matters — economic, social, moral, ethical, scientific, etc., etc. There was no subject on which he did not have an opinion and no area in which he hesitated to demand compliance with what he dictated.

His protégé, Shri Jawaharlal Nehru, was naturally enough created from the same mold: not being master of any subject, he fancied himself to be the master of all subjects. Most unfortunately for India, he thought he understood history, economics, education, technology and science. He dictated without the least hesitation. He was never burdened with self-doubt or aware of his all-encompassing ignorance.

The problem with India is that all of its political leaders have been fundamentally incapable of understanding the limits of their own knowledge and understanding. This is neither good nor sustainable.

]]>7Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=109632015-01-03T03:36:26Z2015-01-03T02:34:30ZContinue reading →]]>So the new game in town is called “NITI Ayog” — National Institution for Transforming India — and the news is that Prof Arvind Panagariya will be appointed as the vice-chairman of the institution, as the Hindustan Times reports. That “Niti” bit may sound familiar to some who have been following this blog. If you recall, my book of 2011 is titled “Transforming India” and in 2012, my colleague and I decided that “New Initiatives for Transforming India” or NITI would be a good word to use for all our initiatives related to . . . wait for it . . . transforming India. Why? Because in Sanskrit (and so in Hindi and Bengali), Niti (or नीति in Devanagri) means variously “morality, policy, ethics, the right path” etc. Our goal was to figure out how to bring about — and help in — the transformation of India. We wanted India’s transformation and continue to do so. “NITI Central” was one of those initiatives.

So I am quite tickled to note that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has relabeled the old Planning Commission as the “National Institution for Transforming India”. It is the old planning commission with a new name. Of course, you all know how I feel about central planning and how wonderful it is for human welfare. Anyway, here’s wishing NITI Ayog the best and hoping that it lives up to its meaning.

Correction: I had mistakenly believed that NITI Ayog was “New Institution for Transforming India” but I was corrected (hat tip Anup) that it was actually “National Institution for Transforming India.” I regret the error (as they say in the MSM.)

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=109532015-01-09T06:40:49Z2015-01-02T04:48:04ZContinue reading →]]>A few days ago, the following tweet was retweeted approvingly by many Indians, no doubt out of a sense pride and patriotism. “Look, look,” they seemed to say, “Look, how great India was. In 1870, India’s GDP was higher than UK, US, Russia, Germany, France and Italy. In fact, India’s GDP was over four times that of Italy.”

I can’t fathom what motivates such mindless jingoism. Only those incapable of basic arithmetic are prone to such idiocy. As the late great John McCarthy used to say, “He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.” Nothing significant can be gleamed from raw numbers alone. At the very least, aggregate numbers are meaningless unless one contextualizes them. The simplest contextualization requires that you normalize them. I wrote about it here in Aug 2004:

. . . any raw number is essentially meaningless. We need to normalize the raw numbers before they can be meaningful. For instance, India is the largest producer of milk and produces 38,945,021 gallons of milk a year as compared to Denmark with only produces 1,045,983 gallons a year. India therefore produces 30 times more milk than Denmark. But that is meaningless unless one also knows that India’s population is 300 times that of Denmark. The proper normalization in this case is per capita milk production and consumption. That is, you take the raw milk production numbers and divide it by the respective population numbers to get the meaningful statistic that Indians only produce 10 gallons per year per capita while Denmark produces 100 gallons per year per capita.

It is simple arithmetic and those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to speak nonsense.

(Disclaimer: All the numbers above are straight out of a hat. They are definitely not accurate. They are for illustrative purposes only. The exact numbers are left as an exercise for the interested reader. For all others who are basically lazy like me, the fake numbers should suffice. You gets what you pays for.) [Source: High Population Considered Necessary but not Sufficient for Poverty.]

So let’s do the basic arithmetic and then see how India stacks up against those other countries in 1870. To save time, let me illustrate what I mean by deriving the normalized GDP figures for India and US only for 1870. India’s population was around 306 million (this site puts it at 306 million) and that of the US was around 38 million (this site puts it as 38,558,371 with astonishing accuracy). Per capita GDP in 1870 thus works out to be $438 for India and $2,579 for the US. Thus the US per capita GDP appears to be almost six times that of India.

Here I am merely illustrating a point that I keep making that raw numbers are meaningless. I don’t know where @INTLSpectator got those GDP numbers but to me they do sound suspect because the implied India’s per capita GDP of $438 in 1870 does not appear realistic.

I believe that in the past — perhaps a thousand years ago — India was not significantly poorer than the rest of the world, and perhaps it was richer. But it was impoverished by forces internal and external. Then a series of unfortunate things happened: the British Raj and after they left, the Congress raj of Mr Nehru and his progeny. Nehruvian socialism basically buried India. Will India recover? I don’t know. But I suspect that it will take the kind of policies that we are unlikely to see.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=109402015-01-01T00:27:37Z2015-01-01T00:21:49ZContinue reading →]]>Well here we are, the end of 2014 CE. It has been an interesting year, all things considered. Nothing of any great important happened to me on the personal front. On a scale stretching between happiness and unhappiness, I was somewhere marked “contented.” I learned a great many things of value and forgot a good deal of what needed to be let go.
On the work front, if I can use the word “work” loosely, I was a minor part of a team that helped, in some tangential way at least, bring about a political change in the country. It is still early to tell how much of a change has happened; preliminary signs are that the changes have not been significant, and what is even more worrisome is that the changes seen so far have not been what many of us had hoped for. Change is too often a chimera and the cynical would exclaim with the French plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they remain the same. In keeping with that spirit, here’s my last tweet for the year.

My goal for the next year is simple: I will work to the best of my abilities to write two books (with apologies to Mr “Mark Tully” Cicero). One will be an updated version of “Transforming India” — it has been three years since it was published. The other book will be about economics, mainly dealing with ideas that I find interesting and worth knowing. I hope to finish them both by mid-Summer. My greatest obstacle in this task is my weakness in just continuing to think and not pay too much attention to acting. I trust that I will overcome that.

I wish you all a happy new year 2015. Be well, do good work and please keep in touch.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=108392014-12-26T06:38:02Z2014-12-26T06:35:29ZContinue reading →]]> An astonishing fact about Amazon, the giant retailer which aims to sell everything to everybody, is that it adjusts its prices over 2.5 million times daily. Let that sink in: two thousand five hundred thousand times a day. Around 100,000 price changes an hour. Granted Amazon has over 250 million SKUs (stock keeping units) on its catalog in the US. (See the data on US and other countries here, as of Aug 2014.) Still, that fact bears witness to what technology can do and what market competition can achieve in terms of economic efficiency.Price Theory

This “economic efficiency” thing may leave the lay person cold but to an economist it is thrilling to the core.[1] Speaking for myself, I recall the exultation I felt when I first understood what prices are and how the market discovers prices. It was a revelation, an “Aha!” moment for me. Whenever I understand a fundamental aspect of the world (such as the theory of relativity, theory of computation, theory of evolution, the scientific method, game theory, and so on), I feel joy. Price theory is one such area and I continue to learn about it all the time.

Like many other great ideas, price theory is at once very complicated and very simple. It is simple enough that the average 10th-grader can grasp the essentials after a few hours of instructions and a little bit of pondering. But it is complicated enough that volumes have been written in exposition. (See this for a list of great text books on the matter.) I believe that it is good to know what price means; it helps us avoid falling into stupid traps that ignorance leads the untutored into.

We all intuitively know what we mean by price: it’s what it says on the price list or the menu. Bananas cost 19 cents each at Trader Joe’s. You give up 19 cents and you get a banana in exchange. You take the price as a given. You are a “price-taker.” Someone at TJ’s has set that price, someone had to make that decision.

It is not an arbitrary decision. TJ’s could set the price at $1 each but it would not sell too many at that price because I will buy bananas from the Safeway next door. In markets where there are more than one seller, you don’t have too much freedom to set prices either. (Price and cost are closely related concepts. To you, bananas cost 19c at TJ’s because that’s the price. To TJ’s, (let’s assume) bananas cost 12c each, when it buys it from some wholesaler of bananas.)

Information

The major function of prices is that they convey information. We constantly need to make decisions. To make those decisions, we need to know. That knowledge is most economically (that is, at the least cost to us) conveyed to us through the prices we face. We decide on how many bananas to buy and from where partly on what the price of bananas is. We know our preferences and our needs, we know how much money we can spend on food, etc, and based on our knowledge of ourselves, and taking prices into consideration, we decide for ourselves how much of what to consume.

Hidden behind the prices we face are all kinds of information that we not only don’t need to know but also not possible for us to know. We don’t need to know how much the producer got paid for the bananas, how much it cost to transport it to the retailer, how much the retailer paid in rents and salaries, and a million other things that happened between the growing of the banana and our eating it. All we need to know is its price when we have to make our decision whether or not to buy that banana. Prices convey information compactly and this compact information is useful knowledge to all participants in market transactions.

There are untold millions of prices out there because there are untold millions of items out there, and there are millions of sellers (firms and individuals) and billions of buyers. Who decides on all these prices? The answer is “no one and every one.” Every time you buy or sell something, you make an infinitesimally small difference in the price. The price of every item depends on the prices of everything. All those millions of prices are determined, in the ultimate analysis, jointly — together and not in isolation — through a process that is incredibly complex, intertwined, connected in time and space, interrelated, multi-directional, grand and incomprehensible to any single or group mind.

Indra’s Net

I think the closest metaphor to the web of information that is at the foundation of the market price mechanism is Indra’s web of jewels. It is an extravagant web with jewels at each of its infinite nodes. Each jewel reflects every other jewel, and each reflection itself reflects the infinite reflections . . .

If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. [Wiki]

Each price is like a jewel in Indra’s infinite web, reflecting all the other prices within itself. When you change any price, the effect is transmitted throughout the entire web and affects every other node. Each node is finite but is infinitely influenced and in turn influences infinitely. Given our finite cognitive capabilities, all we need to look at is the one node that is closest to us but that is sufficient for us to “know” what the infinite web contains in its entirety. Prices, as said before, economize on knowledge.

Repeat after me: Prices convey information.

This information is useful to us for knowing the scarcity or abundance of stuff. Gas prices at the pump are going down around here. Yesterday I filled up at the local Costco at $2.34 a gallon; a year ago it was close to $4 a gallon. How much I drive is influenced by some events that I have no control over and little knowledge of. There are global forces at work — OPEC decisions, oil shale reserves, fracking technology, etc — that I only dimly understand. Regardless, what I do is not unaffected by some trade in an unknown (and unknowable) part of the world.

Prices move in response to shifts in supply and demand. If the supply increases and/or the demand falls, prices head down; if supply decreases and/or demand increases, prices move up. The movement of prices tells us which way the wind if blowing and therefore how to trim our sails.

Prices are the ultimate rationing mechanism. When the quantity demanded is high, the price goes up and therefore only those who are willing to pay the high price are able to get the limited supply. Interfering with the price is generally a bad idea because it sends the wrong signal (information) to people, and they are unable to make the economically efficient decision.

Fixing Prices

One commonplace example of the rationing mechanism of prices is the cost of air tickets. During holiday season, ticket prices go up. Are the airlines “price gouging”? Not necessarily. There are only these many seats on any given day. During the holiday season, many more people want to fly than there are seats available. The higher than normal prices reflect the higher than normal demand. The high prices send a simple message: if you wish to fly desperately enough, you will have a seat provided you are willing to pay for it. And if you are not willing to pay the high price, you are clearly not desperate enough to need that seat and therefore that seat should go to someone more willing to pay than you.

Now imagine that some agency is able to dictate prices of air tickets and imagine further that that agency decides that airlines will be prohibited from raising prices during the holiday season. I realize that this is an unrealistic scenario. No agency — least of all a government — can be so insane as to imagine that it can improve general well-being by controlling prices but humor me for a moment. Imagine that the government of some banana republic is retarded enough to dictate prices to airlines and decrees that airlines cannot “over charge” their customers and puts a price ceiling of $X on tickets during holiday season.

Assume that the price ceiling is binding in the sense that without the ceiling, the price would have been higher. This means that under the price-ceiling regime, the quantity demanded will be higher than the quantity on supply. Some people will get seats at $X per seat but others will have to do without a seat. Some of those without a seat may have an urgent need to buy a seat and therefore may be willing to pay a lot more than $X but that transaction will not happen because the government of the banana republic has prohibited that trade. This leads to misery all around. Which is what characterizes banana republics: government induced, government engineered misery.

Engineered Misery, Planned Poverty

Economics is not quantum mechanics and I will not make the self-serving claim that economists know it all. But insanely idiotic policies generally implemented by the government of banana republics usually go against elementary economic logic. Dear old Milton Friedman put it thusly in his book “Free to Choose” (1979):

Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail.
. . .
Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

Shortages and congestion are, and have been for millennia, a fact of life. In some parts of the world, it has become so much a part of daily life that it is considered an unalterable fact of nature, just like the seasons. One has to live with it and somehow cope. But unlike the seasons, chronic shortages have to be engineered and indeed if you look at it carefully, you will see the grasping hand of some bureaucrat or politician choking the normal functioning of the market. In some fortunate places, thankfully for whatever reasons, the simple but essential truths of economics have been recognized and the government does not interfere as much, and the market is allowed to function.

Markets solve the problem of shortages — they allocate resources efficiently — through the actions of individuals motivated by their desire to make the best of what they can do given their limited resources, and guided by their own assessment of their needs, preferences and capabilities. This knowledge is dispersed throughout the entire nexus of voluntary trade. Everyone has local knowledge and no one has (or can know) it all. Everyone needs to know the prices of only those things that matter to him or her, and disregard the rest.

The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.

The Fatal Mix of Hubris, Ignorance and Stupidity

At the core of most human misery inflicted on humans by humans lies the insidious evil of hubris fed by ignorance and nurtured by stupidity. The hubris arises out of the drive to control others, to make others do one’s bidding. Ignorance of simple truths about the nature of reality makes their intervention harmful even if you grant that perhaps they don’t intend harm. Stupidity is alas a common affliction that no one — without exception — is immune from. All of us labor under the combined burden of hubris, ignorance and stupidity to some degree or the other but most of us don’t have the power to interfere in the fates of millions. But the politicians and bureaucrats do.

The civil aviation ministry is considering a cap on last minute economy class fares after members of Parliament criticised the recent price hikes by airlines.

The limit may be set at Rs 20,000. “Severe criticism is there from many quarters, including members of Parliament, tour operators, passengers, etc, that the airline companies are charging very high fares on the immediate day preceding travel and the date of actual travel,” the ministry said in an internal note.

Why should the cap be at that high price of Rs 20,000? Why not just Rs 200? Wouldn’t that make air travel really affordable? And while they are at it, why not assign quotas for minorities and reservations for the “underprivileged”?

Read the entire news item. That is what I call USDA Grade AA top shelf insanity. It may appear to some that this is just some garden variety government stupidity. After all, you may say, the civil aviation ministry is probably run by a bunch of retarded bureaucrats who wouldn’t know anything about dynamic pricing even if their lives depended on it. It’s a minor matter, you would say. But it is not. All those little bits of brainless interference adds up to immense welfare losses and eventually impoverishes the country. India’s descent into being a banana republic has been engineered by such idiocy.

If I could, I would slap the idiots at the civil aviation ministry silly and drive some sense into their thick skulls. But perhaps the disease doesn’t stop there. It goes all the way up to the top — the constitution. That needs to be replaced, not just the idiot functionaries.

NOTES:

[1] What’s economic efficiency and how is it defined? Efficient means that there is no waste. A distribution is considered efficient if no changes can be made to the distribution to make someone better off without someone being made worse off. This is known as “allocative” or “Pareto optimality.” This is purely an efficiency criterion and has nothing to do with equity. For instance, if we divide a cookie between the two of us, and some of it falls into the trash, the division is not efficient. Thus efficiency requires that there be no waste of resources. Optimality is defined with reference to some criterion and subject to some constraint. In the case of the cookie, the division could be said to be optimal if we achieve a division that maximizes our combined utility subject to some constraint such as that neither of us receives less than, say, 25% of the cookie. An efficient division need not be optimal. (return)

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=108352014-12-24T21:16:20Z2014-12-24T21:16:20ZContinue reading →]]>The (northern) Winter Solstice was on Sunday. On that day, the sun appears to stand still for a moment in the sky as it reverses it direction across the sky. This happens on the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere.) For details, check out the wiki.

Winter Solstice and Yuletide greetings to all sentient beings. May all beings be happy. ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः ॐ

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=108202014-11-14T17:14:41Z2014-11-14T17:14:41ZContinue reading →]]>Why Indians celebrate Children’s Day on Nov 14th is a bit of a mystery to me. Of course I know that Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty was born on Nov 14th. Why would anyone consider him to be significant for Indian children is the mysterious part. If the facts be considered, Indians should observe Children’s Day on some other day than a day that is somehow related to Nehru. For two very pertinent reasons. First, contrary to the government brainwashing, Nehru wasn’t particularly fond of children. He was, according to some reliable sources, very short-tempered with them and had them removed from his presence immediately after the de rigueur photo ops. Sure, he liked roses and the ladies but I find all claims that he somehow adored children rather incredible.
But there is a more significant reason why I believe that Nehru should be the last person you’d want to associate with children. His policies have condemned a few generations of Indian children to horrifically sad childhoods. Hundreds of millions of children have had to grow up hungry and without even a decent primary education. Perhaps he did not specifically intend it to be so, but his social and economic policies have direct and robust links to India’s poverty, and children are the most vulnerable segment of the population under the stress of poverty.

Nehru was in dictatorial command of India for 17 years following India’s “independence” in 1947. To the one at the top of the heap goes the credit or the blame for the success or the failure of the enterprise. When the British left (and I use the word “left” advisedly), they transferred power to the Indian National Congress. Mohandas Gandhi had made Nehru the supreme commander of the INC — and therefore the Supreme Commander and Dear Leader of India. Nehru set India on such a disastrous path that it took until 2014 merely to get rid of his progeny from the levers of government. How long it will take for India to dig itself out of the hole that Nehruvian socialism has buried it in? I can’t tell for sure but given the depth, I am guessing about half a century. It will require not only time, but consummate skill and infinite dedication. Most of all, it will require an educated citizenry and polity. Which, in our case, we have not got.

Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles, needs to be petitioned most earnestly. Mere human effort will not suffice, I think.

But times they are a-changing. Once upon a time, the government had control over what was published and what was said over the air-waves. So they concocted a fake story about how wonderful MK Gandhi, his blue-eyed boy Nehru, Nehru’s daughter (half of India believes that Indira was Gandhi’s daughter), her son Rajiv (the glorified bus driver aka as a pilot), Rajiv’s Italian wife (not merely uneducated but incompetent in everything other than hatching evil schemes), her son (some village is definitely missing its idiot) — the whole Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan has been for India.

That fake story is unraveling fast. Thanks to the internet, people have the opportunity to read a more accurate story. Also, I am most thankful for smart phones and the modern mobile network for people to access the content on the internet. I am technology optimist and if anyone needs convincing that technology can do immense good, all you have to do is to point them to how technology will perhaps help India’s motto — Satyam Eva Jayate or Truth Alone Prevails — become a reality for Indians. Indians will know the truth about Nehru and then they will observe Nov 14th as the “Day of Shame and Lamentations for India.”

I would give it about 10 years for that change to happen.

Here are a couple of pieces related to Nehru the Disaster. (Yes, in our lifetime itself, that’ll be the title. You have your Alexander the Great. Nehru the Disaster will roll off the tongue equally easily. Just like Teresa the Merciless. And Raul the Retard.)

Kumar Anand, you have very succinctly answered some of the usual Nehruvian apologetics, Nehru was incompetent and furthermore, was blind to his incompetence. The fact that he believed in governmental control of the economy can be easily understood — although that does not justify governmental control — by noting that he was in control and that being in control was consistent with his authoritarian nature, and that it suited him personally that he dictated the path to the “commanding heights of the economy.”

2. Rajnikant Puranik wrote a blog post to mark the occasion and says, “This blog (Part-I) attempts a summary evaluation of Nehru as a political leader. Being a summary, it does not go into details. Subsequent blogs in this series would take up each aspect in detail.”"Evaluating Nehru”

Puranik’s post is really long. I have put it in the “to be read as soon as I am done with a blog post” pile. Now that I’m done with this blog post, I am ready to go read it and learn.

INCIDENTALLY:

1. I am in Leuven, Belgium. Got here on Tuesday morning and will leave for Mumbai on Monday morning.

2. I am done with most of what I was busy with (ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies) the last few months. That means I am now going to be regularly writing, on this blog and elsewhere.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=107632014-10-05T18:29:02Z2014-10-05T18:10:57ZContinue reading →]]>George Orwell claimed, “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” By that measure, a commitment to telling the truth as one sees it must make one a bit of a revolutionary. Here I continue with my argument that the Indian constitution is the fountainhead of all of India’s troubles. Unless and until it is replaced, India will continue to languish at the bottom of the heap. That claim predictably makes people uncomfortable. In this series I aim to support argue for its truth. (Here is the first part.) In this part, I examine the importance of rules.

An economy essentially is a collection of interacting human beings. For any group of two or more people, this collective interaction requires rules. These rules could have evolved naturally, in which case they are part of the culture. or they could have been formally codified through some formal procedure (which itself could have been arrived at organically or by borrowing from others.) In all cases, however, there always are rules.

Rules are powerful

They fundamentally determine the nature and outcome of the interactions that go to determine the game. An economy is a very large, multi-generational complicated game played by a very large number of people. It is easy to see that rules determine the game.

A board game like chess differs from checkers or draughts because the rules are different. It is not the shape of the pieces that make them different games. The same pieces under different rules define a different game. Similarly, the same set of players following different rules could play a game of soccer or a game of cricket. Rules define all games, including the great games of politics and economics.

All political entities are defined (and distinguished) by the rules. Two entities following different set of rules have different outcomes. Natural historical experiments across the world point to the truth of this proposition. Following WW II, East and West Germany’s fortunes diverged. The people in the two nations had similar endowments — history, culture, material & social. They followed different sets of rules. The outcomes were markedly different.

The same story can be told for North and South Korea, and many other parts of the world. Another example relates to the US and Argentina.

A short century ago the US and Argentina were rivals. Both were riding the first wave of globalisation at the turn of the 20th century. Both were young, dynamic nations with fertile farmlands and confident exporters. Both brought the beef of the New World to the tables of their European colonial forebears. Before the Great Depression of the 1930s, Argentina was among the 10 richest economies in the world.

A hundred years later there was no choice at all. One had gone on to be among the most successful economies ever. The other was a broken husk.

There was no individual event at which Argentina’s path was set on a permanent divergence from that of the United States of America. But there was a series of mistakes and missteps that fit a general pattern. The countries were dealt quite similar hands but played them very differently. The similarities between the two in the second half of the 19th century, and in fact up to 1939, were neither fictional nor superficial.

[Source: “Argentina: The superpower that never was.” Alan Beattie in the Financial Times of May 23rd, 2009]

The different outcomes of the two countries depended on a variety of factors, no doubt, but the one salient factor that necessarily differed was in the different rule sets the two countries followed.

Rules Determine Trajectories

The trajectory that an economy takes is dictated by the rules. If the trajectory has to change, the rules have to change. If the rules don’t change, the trajectory does not change. This fact simply explains the persistence of prosperity or poverty of nations. Generally, the rules persist and therefore the trajectory persists.

People make the rules. But in a bit of circular causation, rules make the people. Of course, it is only the “leaders” of the group make the rules. But the rules themselves determine who the leaders are. Rules provide the constraints within which the rules are made and by whom. Rules choose leaders and leaders choose rules (although this is not simultaneous.)

[Next up: Part 3 -- The Persistence of Policies.]

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=107522014-10-04T02:28:25Z2014-10-04T02:26:11ZContinue reading →]]> For Bengalis, the five day long worship of Ma Durga is simply pujo. This is the time when Ma Durga comes for a visit to her maternal home. The festival culminates on Bijoy Dashimi with the protima (the idol) given a visarjan (ceremonial immersion in a river or a lake). Then it is time for people to greet each other with “Shubho Bijoya.” The important thing is that you wish people after the visarjan is over. This gets complicated in a world in which people live in different time zones. In India, visarjan is already over and they are wishing Shubho Bijoya but over here California we still have not had visarjan. So with that brief caution, here’s wishing you all Shubho Bijoya.

(Tomorrow I will go to a Durga puja and post some pictures.)

Here’s a song from E.S. Posthumus called Durga from their album “Maraka.” Others songs titles in that album are Kalki, Vishnu, Indra, etc.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=107312014-09-28T15:14:23Z2014-09-28T15:14:23ZContinue reading →]]> “A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.”

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899 – 1992). Austrian economist.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=106832014-09-25T02:14:03Z2014-09-25T00:30:04ZContinue reading →]]>I make no secret of the fact that I believe Shri Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, is an honest, intelligent, dedicated, sincere and diligent man. I admire him immensely for who he is and what he has accomplished over his many decades as a politician. The set P = {p | famous politician p is honest, intelligent, dedicated, sincere, diligent} is small but non-empty. For all I know, the set P is exhaustively enumerated as P = {Narendra Modi, Arun Shourie}. But at the very least, I am certain that {Narendra Modi, Arun Shourie} ⊂ P. I indulge myself in the frivolity of using set-theoretic notations at the start of this piece only because I have a few serious points to make.Modi, a man of substance

Shri Modi is also a very practical man, a realist, not some airheaded idealist. Starting from “humble beginnings”, he would not have reached where he is today without being supremely practical. Despite formidable, sustained, relentless opposition from every quarter — within and without his own party — opposition that would have broken even the most hardened politician, Modi prevailed and how. He survived an ordeal by fire that no other politician in India has ever had to face. That he triumphed in the war of Indian majoritarian electoral politics without compromising his principles attests to his character and determination. He is a leader par excellence of the nation because he is a nationalist. For him, the nation above all; for him, the national interest trumps all other interests.

People trust him because he is trustworthy. He has earned, and deserves, trust. Did I mention that I admire Shri Modi? For the record, let me state that I believe that among political leaders, I consider him to be the best India has in that regard. This is not a newly arrived realization. I have been beating that drum privately and publicly for years. Unlike many (who shall not be named) observers who have only recently jumped on the bandwagon, I have consistently been what in the vernacular is called a fan.

Modi, a vilified man

Shri Modi has been unfairly vilified by his enemies. Antonia Maino’s, aka Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the UPA, labeling of Modi as maut ka saudagar epitomizes that abuse that large sections of the main stream media gleefully indulged in for years. They carried on a relentless, vicious campaign of hate and falsehoods for over a decade.

Modi’s response to all that calumny? Work relentlessly, and be the best, longest-serving chief minister Gujarat has ever had. And then undertake a superhuman, punishing national election campaign to win the biggest win for the NDA and the BJP. In doing so, he defeated not just the UPA, the Gandhi-Maino clan, the Congress — but also the so-called “160 Club” and the “180 Club.” It was a victory that gave a fitting reply to the despicable Maino-clan and its legions of minions.

Not just at home, Modi’s enemies took their fight off-shore. In their campaign to malign the man, they plumbed unimaginably sordid depths. They invited foreign involvement in India’s domestic affairs and undermined India’s sovereignty. They impugned and sullied India’s judicial system by proclaiming Modi guilty even after the courts found no case against him.

Modi’s US visa

Shri Modi had traveled to the US prior to 2002 and therefore had to have a US visa. But in 2005, the US State Department revoked his visa. The details of why the US did that need not detain us here. The fact is that the US State Department declared him persona non grata, in essence saying “The US does not want Modi to set foot on US soil.”

For the record we must be clear that Modi’s visa was not refused. His visa was revoked. And after the revocation, Modi did not apply and therefore there can be no valid claim that the US refused a visa to Modi. And as far as I know, the US has not reversed that revocation. I don’t know the details. Besides the details don’t really matter for what I submit here.

It seems to me (and this is just my opinion) that if the US were to reverse the 2005 revocation of Modi’s US visa, it would be admitting that it had incorrectly held Modi responsible for a crime.

Uncomfortable but Pertinent Questions

Did the US State Department make a mistake? Is Modi entitled to an apology from the US? Can the US ever apologize to Modi? Will Modi overlook the ignominy that the US State Department exposed him to? Should Modi swallow his pride and overlook the insult? Is it proper for Modi to visit the US as the prime minister of India in light of the fact that he is not welcome in the US as a private citizen? Is it an insult to Modi alone or is it an insult to India?

Has the Indian government ever expressed its dissatisfaction that the US declared the elected chief minister of one of its states as a PNG? Indeed, was the UPA ever critical of the US government’s decision regarding Modi’s visa? Or was it happy to see its political opponent pilloried even at the cost of India’s international standing?

To my mind, these are reasonable questions that need to be asked and answered. These are also uncomfortable questions and reasonable people will may differ in their answers. I have voiced my opinion publicly (on twitter and I have been on record in a piece at IndiaFacts) that I would have preferred if Shri Modi were not to visit the US until the visa issue was resolved.

I am not a politician and I definitely don’t claim insight into the complex nature of international relations and foreign affairs. Most of all, I am entirely ignorant of what is called realpolitik, a term coined by Ludwig von Rochau, a German politician in 1853.

“The study of the powers that shape, maintain and alter the state is the basis of all political insight and leads to the understanding that the law of power governs the world of states just as the law of gravity governs the physical world.”

The Law of Power

The US is the most powerful nation on earth. It is powerful militarily and economically. Economic power is a necessary pre-requisite for military power. All other nations have to therefore pay tribute to the US. This is the law. The powerful make the rules of the game. A disconcerting realization perhaps but the truth of this is evident to even the most casual observer of international relations. Modi may be the most powerful man in India but India is not powerful relative to the US. One does not have to get a degree in foreign relations to recognize that.

The two superpowers of the contemporary world are the US and China. One may recall that a few years ago when the then US president Bill Clinton was planning a state visit to China, he was contemplating a stopover in India. The Chinese told him that he should feel free to visit India but he should visit China only when he is not encumbered by an Indian stopover. From one superpower to another. Clinton dropped the India of stopping in India and did his China visit.

Later, when Clinton visited India as the US president, he did stop in Pakistan (albeit briefly.) The Indian government had pleaded (if memory serves) that Clinton not visit Pakistan on that trip but he ignored that. That’s one superpower to a subservient nation.

India does not bat in the same league as China. China and India were in the same club around 1978. But after Deng Xiaoping took over, China raced ahead of India. China’s GDP is four or five times India’s, and given that its income has been multiples of India’s for some nearly 40 years, its wealth is many times that of India’s.

Power and Wealth

Wealth matters. The wealthy are different from the poor. The wealthy nations make the rules that other nations have to play by. It is an international matter. But — and here’s a point that I will never tire of stressing — the wealth of a nation is determined not internationally but domestically. Domestic rules of the game determine whether the nation is wealthy, and that in turn determines the international pecking order.

That the prime minister of the nation is compelled by his nation’s interest to go to a nation where he is not welcome as a private citizen speaks to its international standing. I cannot imagine a situation where a major US political leader would ever visit India were the situation reversed. Leave alone the US, I cannot imagine this for happening in the case of China — a nation much, much poorer than the US.

The law of power is like the law of gravity: it cannot be ignored. The laws of economics too cannot be ignored without penalty. Those who are poor cannot afford the luxury of pride. Hat in hand, one has to be a supplicant seeking favors from the rich and powerful. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract (1762), “To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will; it is at best an act of prudence.”

An act of necessity, an act of prudence

The world sorts out the weak from the strong, it separates the dependent from the self-reliant. When it comes to individuals, the distinction between the weak and the strong is not entirely clear-cut. A favorite story relates to one of my heroes — the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (c.412 BCE – 323 BCE) — and the Greek emperor Alexander (356 BCE – 323 BCE). Diogenes was his own man and led a life of such simplicity that he had practically no possessions. He kowtowed to no man or god. Alexander was much impressed by what he’d heard about Diogenes.

Diogenes was in Corinth when Alexander the Great sent word through a messenger asking Diogenes to come see him in Macedonia.

Diogenes told the messenger, “Go tell your emperor that Corinth is as far from Macedonia as Macedonia is from Corinth. So if your emperor wants to see me, he can come and find me here.”

That is an act of will, not an act of prudence born out of necessity. Diogenes didn’t care about how high and mighty Alexander was. He was a free man.

When Alexander heard that message, he got on his high horse and traveled all the way to Corinth. Diogenes was sitting in his tub in the town square, enjoying the sun. Dismounting, Alexander grandly declared that he would grant Diogenes anything he wished for. Diogenes said to Alexander, “I want you to stand aside. You are blocking the sun.”

The distance between Washington, DC and New Delhi

In the case of nations, the power structure can be more clearly identified than in the case individuals. Diogenes was clearly more powerful than Alexander. That Modi will to travel to Washington, DC should come as no surprise. Perhaps it is not an act of will but of prudence and necessity.

Necessity compelled because India is not rich and powerful. Let me get back to the core of my simple view of India’s economy. India is poor not out of necessity but out of choice. Nations choose, and in a sense that choice is much less constrained than choices that individuals face. External circumstances limit individual choices but for a large nation (defined as having a significant fraction of the world population and a large geographical extent), its prosperity is entirely self-determined. Of course, that choice is not directly exercised by the citizens but collectively the people decide whom they want as their leaders and these leaders in turn choose the policies that determine the nation’s prosperity.

The distance between New Delhi and Washington, DC is shorter than the distance between Washington, DC to New Delhi because India’s economic policies have sucked for decades — which was because Indian leadership has sucked — which was because Indian voters have sucked in their choices.

Domestic problems, domestic solutions

India has domestic problems, and international solutions cannot solve them. If your family life is in shambles, getting citations for excellence at the office is not going to do much good. Indeed, if you have domestic problems at home, you are much less likely to get very much done at work.

For my money, I would much rather that India gets its economic policies right. By that I mean, I think Shri Modi should give a lot more attention to fixing India’s economic policies than fixing India’s foreign relations. Projects are all well and good but they are often distractions from the major tasks.

For example, the Indian agriculture sector needs urgent attention. There are too many farmers and their income is too little — the two facts are of course related. The more farmers, the poorer the whole lot. This is true from any large country. To help the farmers, reforms are needed not just in the agricultural sector but in sectors that apparently don’t have much to do with agriculture — education, urbanization, labor laws, power and international trade. This is surprising to many. I can go into it another time.

I recently read a report that Modi has asked the manufacturers of soft-drinks (Pepsi and Coke) to include fruit juices in their fizzy drinks. Why? To help Indian farmers. I kid you not. That is not right. The problems that Indian farmers face is almost all entirely due to government policies. Changing government policies will help the farmers more than exhorting drinks manufacturers to alter their products to suit the needs of Indian farmers.

India needs change. One of the biggest change that India needs has been stated by Shri Modi — India needs the Indian government to get out of business. As long as the government is so deeply entrenched in business, India will not prosper economically. India will continue to be poor, and the Indian government will continue to be a “government of the poor” and that will lead to more poverty. And that poverty will see more foreign trips, hat in hand.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=106602014-09-05T04:29:41Z2014-09-05T02:20:25ZContinue reading →]]>Well, what do you know! Amazing things are happening around the world. One of the more positive developments has been that of the Islamic State (formerly known as the ISIS) showing up and demonstrating to the world what “peace” means in the “Religion of Peace.(™)” They are the poster boys of Islam, arguing against the left-lib-tards (that’s the short form for “leftist liberal retards”) who keep on insisting that Islam is a religion of peace.
(I read this somewhere: If someone declares that they love you, ask for proof; if someone says that they wish to kill you, believe them and get away quickly.)

In every case of Islamic terrorism, the perpetrators loudly proclaim Allahu-akbar and declare that they are following Islam’s dictates. But their claim is met with the leftlibtards’ denial “No, these are misunderstanders of Islam.” Quote chapter and verse from the Qur’an (Koran, Quran) or the Hadiths (Hadis) showing that the Islamic State is being faithful to the commands of Allah (the Islamic god) as recorded in the Quran by Muslims — and still the leftlibtards will continue with their denial. Perhaps the Islamic State has to go beyond video-taped beheading of foreign journalists to catch the attention of the retards that run the Western countries.

I say that IS is a positive development because the sooner the bloodthirsty religion of Islam is seen to be the evil it is, the better it will be for all — non-Muslims and Muslims alike. Once in grad school, a friend of mine told me that he likes the house parties (we used to live in a student housing co-op in Berkeley) early in the term. Why, I asked. He said, “With all the booze, many people get drunk. How they behave when they are drunk gives you a fairly accurate idea of what kind of people they are. Once you have identified the obnoxious ones, it is easy to avoid them.”

The British are helping the world in a big way. They imported the spawn of the evil ideology by the boatloads — from such Islamic paradises as Pakistan. When they gained sufficient numerical strength, they let the British society have it. In one recently reported case, around 1400 children have been raped by gangs of Religion of Peacers from Pakistan. This happened over a span of over a decade — but the authorities just turned a blind eye.

London does deserve the new name “Londonistan.” But the idiot leaders will not wake up, until I suppose one of their beloved Pakistani ROP-follower plants a dirty bomb there. One does not hope for such things to happen, but if it is to happen, I say let it happen sooner rather than later, because the sooner the civilized world crushes that evil ideology, the better for the whole world.

One Western leader has been indefatigable in his opposition to Islam — the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I have been following his career for a while and I have mentioned him on this blog several times for over five years. (See these four posts.)

BTW, Wilders was denied entry into Londonistan in Feb 2009, as I reported it on this blog. Here’s an excerpt:

“Dutch populist politician and controversial anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders has been refused entry to the United Kingdom despite being invited to visit by a member of the House of Lords, the British parliament’s upper chamber. . . Geert Wilders, perhaps best known outside the Netherlands for having made the video Fitna, in which the religion Islam and its holy book the Koran are attacked as providing a basis for terrorist attacks and for the undermining of western democracy and values, had been invited to London for a showing of this film to members of the British parliament.”

I mention the above because Wilders refers to his Fitna movie in his recent speech. Here it is, for the record.

Madam Speaker, actually I was expecting flowers from you. I am celebrating an anniversary these days. Exactly ten years and two days ago, I left a party whose name I cannot immediately remember. During these ten years and two days. I have been much criticized. Most importantly for always saying the same thing

My critics are right. Indeed, my message had been the same during all these years. And today, I will repeat the same message about Islam again. For the umpteenth time. As I have been doing for ten years and two days.

I have been vilified for my film Fitna. And not just vilified, but even prosecuted. Madam Speaker, while not so many years ago, everyone refused to broadcast my film Fitna, we can today watch Fitna 2, 3, 4 and 5 daily on our television screens. It is not a clash of civilizations that is going on, but a clash between barbarism and civilization.

The Netherlands has become the victim of Islam because the political elite looked away. Here, in these room, they are all present, here and also in the Cabinet, all these people who looked away. Every warning was ignored.

As a result, also in our country today, Christians are being told: “We want to murder you all.” Jews receive death threats. Swastika flags at demonstrations, stones go through windows, Molotov cocktails, Hitler salutes are being made, macabre black ISIS flags wave in the wind, we hear cries, such as “F-ck the Talmud,” on the central square in Amsterdam.

Indeed, Madam Speaker, this summer, Islam came to us.

In all naivety, Deputy Prime Minister Asscher states that there is an “urgent demand” from Muslims to “crack down” on this phenomenon. Last Friday, in its letter to Parliament, the Cabinet wrote that jihadists are hardly significant. They are called a “sect”, and a “small” group.

This is what those who look away wish, these deniers of the painful truth for ten years and two days, the ostrich brigade Rutte 2.

But the reality is different. According to a study, 73% of all Moroccans and Turks in the Netherlands are of the opinion that those who go to Syria to fight in the jihad are “heroes.” People whom they admire.

And this is not a new phenomenon. Thirteen years ago, 3,000 people died in the attacks of 9/11. We remember the images of burning people jumping from the twin towers. Then, also, three-quarters of the Muslims in the Netherlands condoned this atrocity. That is not a few Muslims, but hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the Netherlands condoning terrorism and saying jihadists are heroes. I do not make this up. It has been investigated. It is a ticking time bomb.

Madam Speaker, is it a coincidence that for centuries Muslims were involved in all these atrocities? No, it is not a coincidence. They simply act according to their ideology. According to Islam, Allah dictated the truth to Muhammad, “the perfect man.” Hence, whoever denies the Koran, denies Allah. And Allah leaves no ambiguity about what he wants. Here are a few quotes from the Quran:

Surah 8 verse 60: “Prepare to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.”

Surah 47 verse 4: “Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks”. We see it every day in the news.

Another quote from Allah is Surah 4 verse 89: “So take not friends from the ranks of the unbelievers, seize them and kill them wherever ye find them.”

Madam Speaker, the Koran on the table before you is a handbook for terrorists. Blood drips from its pages. It calls for perpetual war against non-believers. That Koran before you is the hunting permit for millions of Muslims. A license to kill. That book is the Constitution of the Islamic State. What ISIS does is what Allah commands.

This bloodthirsty ideology was able to nestle in the Netherlands because our elites looked away. Neighborhoods such as Schilderswijk, Transvaal, Crooswijk, Slotervaart, Kanaleneiland, Huizen, you name it. There, the caliphate is under construction; there, the Islamic State is in preparation.

During the past ten years and two days , the ostrich Cabinets did nothing. It has nothing to do with Islam, they lied to the people. Imagine them having to tell the truth.

But the people have noticed. Two thirds of all Dutch say that the Islamic culture does not belong in the Netherlands. Including the majority of the electorate of the Labour Party, the majority of the voters of the VVD, the majority of the voters of the CDA, and all the voters of the PVV.

The voters demand that, after ten years and two days of slumber, measures are finally taken. The voters demand that something effective happen. No semi-soft palliatives. Allow me to make a few suggestions to the away-with-us mafia. Here are a few things which should happen starting today:

Recognize that Islam is the problem. Start the de-Islamization of the Netherlands. Less Islam.

Close every Salafist mosque which receives even a penny from the Gulf countries. Deprive all jihadists of their passports, even if they only have a Dutch passport. Let them take an ISIS passport.

Do not prevent jihadists from leaving our country. Let them leave, with as many friends as possible. If it helps, I am even prepared to go to Schiphol [airport] to wave them goodbye. But let them never come back. That is the condition. Good riddance.

And, as far as I am concerned, anyone who expresses support for terror as a means to overthrow our constitutional democracy has to leave the country at once. If you are waving an ISIS flag you are waving an exit ticket. Leave! Get out of our country!

Madam Speaker, war has been declared against us. We have to strike back hard. Away with these people! Enough is enough!

(I will file this post under Islamic Terroris, Jihad, etc. More to come.)

It’s that time of the year once again — the time of Ganesha’s visit and therefore this annual post which is a tradition on this blog.

He is invoked at the beginnings of all endeavors. I recently bought a Chromebox. What better than having Ganesh grant his protection to the little computer? Last time I was in India, I had picked up a few small brass Ganeshas. So I placed one of them on the computer. Here’s the Vighana Haran, the Defeater of Obstacles, ensuring that the computer works fine. He looks quite comfortable, don’t you think?

Ganesh is associated with the finer things of life. Learning, good food, wisdom, writing, knowledge. I approve of them all. So it is natural that he is one of my favorite gods. As part of Ganesha’s worship, I listen to Kishori Amonkar sing “Ganapati Vighana Haran Gajanan” in Raag Hamsadhwani. It is divinely beautiful.

Ganesh Chaturthi greetings to all sentient beings.

Listen.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=105362014-08-06T21:34:54Z2014-08-05T22:56:32ZContinue reading →]]>Milton Friedman used to elegantly distinguish between four ways of spending money. First, when you spend your own money on yourself, you are very careful to get the most benefit for your buck. After all, it is your money and you know what you want for yourself. Second, when you spend your own money on someone else. Here too you carefully economize to meet your objective but since you don’t know the other person’s needs as well as you do your own needs, your spending may not be as optimal for the other person. Third, you spend other people’s money on yourself. In this case, your incentive to economize is certainly blunted. You are much more concerned with getting the best and less with what it will cost.

Finally, when you spend other people’s money on someone else. That is, you transfer resources from one group to another group. In such cases, economizing goes out the window, and what is worse, you promote your own ends rather than the ends of those whose money you are spending or those who are the ostensible beneficiaries of the transfer. The most ubiquitous example of this is what he calls the “distributor of welfare funds” — taxpayers money being spent by government officials for welfare. Here’s Friedman in his own words:

The economic efficiency of spending is worth paying attention to. It means using the least cost method to achieve the desired objective. When it isn’t your own money, how much you spend does not matter. Economic efficiency suffers when other people’s money is spent on some other people. As C. Northcote Parkinson noted, when money is no object the only economizing done is in thinking.

But there is one really pernicious effect of spending other people’s money on others. It leads to what economists call “moral hazard” and “opportunistic behavior.” The spender of other people’s money often uses it the manipulate the beneficiaries of the spending. Government officials use taxpayers’ money to buy votes by distributing goodies to preferred groups. The power to tax and spend is dangerous as power usually is: it tends to corrupt.

Briefly this is the story. Congressman Crockett on his re-election campaign meets a voter, one Mr. Horatio Bunce, a farmer. Bunce tells Crockett that while he voted for him at the last election, he will not do so this time. Why? Bunce explains, because –

Horatio Bunce: “… you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. … I believe you to be honest. But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.”

Davy Crockett: “I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question.”

HB: “No, Colonel, there’s no mistake. . . . My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown. Is that true?”

DC: “Certainly it is, and I thought that was the last vote which anybody in the world would have found fault with.”

HB: “Well, Colonel, where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?”

DC: “Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.”

HB: “It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be entrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. …

“So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other.

“No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. … There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week’s pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington, no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give.

“The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.

“So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.” {Emphasis added.}

This story resonated very powerfully with me. Last year in March before I came across the Crockett speech, I had pondered the matter of government compensation of victims of tragedies in a piece that I had written for Quartz magazine, which I re-published here, “The Case Against Government Compensation of Crime Victims.”

Constitutionality

One of the reasons that Crockett’s speech appeals to me has to do with the emphasis that Mr Bunce places on the constitutionality of the government as the distributor of welfare funds. The US constitution, as Bunce notes, does not give the US Congress the power to give away public money in charity. The Congress was not authorized by the people (through the constitution) and therefore it is unconstitutional.

We should stress one matter here: merely because something is constitutional does not mean that it is good, and conversely, just because something is unconstitutional does not make it bad. What makes something good or bad depends on whether it accords with reason, regardless of what the constitution says. All said and done, constitutions are human artifacts and like everything else, not perfect. However, if much thought has gone in framing the constitution based on sound fundamental principles, then it makes sense to refer to it to settle matters easily. It should act as an authenticating mechanism: if something is unconstitutional, it is probably unsound.

And now to the main point of this piece: Why the government must not be in the business of distributing public money for charity. Simply put, it leads to a reduction of freedom and is un-democratic in principle. Let’s explore why it implies a reduction of freedom.

Collective Goods

One of the main purposes of a government is the provision of “collective goods” — goods that usually cannot be efficiently provided by the private sector — such as national defense, internal law and order, funding of public health, public sanitation, etc. These goods and services are such that they cannot be individually purchased and provided. You cannot go to the market and buy a unit of national defense like you can go and buy a pair of jeans. These have to be collectively financed and the benefits accrue to the collective without discrimination. Collective or public financing is done through taxation.

One of the components of freedom is to spend your earnings in whatever way you wish. To the extent that some of your earnings are taxed away by the government to finance collective goods, your financial freedom is curtailed. However, when the taxes you pay buys you something that you value — security, for instance — it takes on the characteristics of a trade. You are “buying” collective goods with your tax money. Therefore, this transaction can be seen as a trade, much like the trade when you buy a pair of jeans. Both can be viewed as a transaction entered into voluntarily.

Without going into the question of precisely what can be characterized as essential collective goods, we can label the taxing and spending on them as “non-discretionary” — the government has to do it and that is that. Any government spending beyond that is discretionary and therefore subject to the closest scrutiny. Why? Because the financing of discretionary items, taxes have to be imposed and that, as noted before, reduces your financial freedom.

Just to be clear, “freedom” means the absence of coercion and dictation by others. You are not free if someone is dictating to you on what you may or may not do, or if someone forcibly takes away your property. Thus when someone — perhaps your neighbor or your government — takes away part of your income to finance something that is not a collective good, your freedom gets eroded.

Statues of Dead Politicians

Let’s concoct an unrealistic example of discretionary spending. The politicians decide that they will build a gigantic statue of a well-known dead politician. It will cost $1.2 billion. Consequently the citizens lose $1.2 billion worth of “financial freedom” — they could have used that money as they would have deemed fit but instead they are forced to pay for a statue whether they approve of it or not. True, given a population of 1.2 billion, per capita the waste comes out to be only $1. But remember that for a poor person, every dollar counts. And whether a person is poor or not, it is the violation of a principle — that a person should not be coerced to pay for non-essentials — that is unethical and wrong.

Now it is conceivable that people may say that a country needs to recognize the greatness of great dead politicians by erecting massively impressive tall statues. Well in that case, let the people decide. Let it be a democratic decision, especially if it happens to be a so-called democracy. Let the people vote with their wallets and do so directly, and not indirectly through their elected representatives.

I am not against the government’s involvement in discretionary public projects such as statues of dead politicians. I am sure that the government has a role but only indirectly. What I am arguing for is that the discretion should be exercised by the people and not by government officials and bureaucrats. If the government has to be involved at all, that role has to be limited to providing a coordinating signal. Let the government announce that “there is a need to finance a massive statue of this dead politician, and so we have put a huge big donation collection box into which you can put your hard-earned money.”

That’s an example of direct democracy. People choose to put their money where their mouths are. There is no force or coercion involved. People vote with their wallets and if enough votes are collected, the massive statue gets erected without fuss.

Limited Government

Lately we have heard a lot about “minimum government and maximum governance.” To move beyond the rhetoric and into action, one way to achieve minimum government is for the government to vacate the space that legitimately belongs to the people. Let the people decide, not the politicians or the bureaucrats, what they want to spend their money on. Let the people decide unless of course the claim is that the people are too immature or incapable of deciding for themselves on such matters. But then that leads to an inconsistency: on the one hand people are held to be mature and capable enough of self-governance and hence a democracy; and on the other hand they are regarded to be so immature that they cannot be trusted to decide for themselves how they should spend their money.

That sort of inconsistency should be evident to all — expect that it somehow eludes those who are in government. However, that is understandable. Politicians and bureaucrats have an incentive to increase taxes and increase spending because not only does it increase their power but they also get to handle all the money with very sticky fingers.

Politicians and bureaucrats award contracts to their favored firms, get kickbacks and then during elections get funding from the owners of the beneficiary firms.

Charity

Of all the pernicious things that a government does, arguably the worst is when the government gets into the business of charity. That’s the kind that Mr Bunce took exception to. If politicians and bureaucrats want to support charity, they should do that with their own money, not the public’s money. They are free to contribute as much as they wish of their own money, and they should extend that freedom to everybody else. Let people decide how much they want to spend and on which charity.

I can honestly claim that I contribute to charity regularly. Why? Because I am moved by empathy and compassion towards my fellow beings. I not only receive the joy of giving without expectations of return, I also derive psychic satisfaction by exercising the freedom of deciding on whom or what I spend my money. I wish I had more money so that I could give more of it away. A favorite quote from Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet goes, “All you have shall some day be given; Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors.”

When the government takes my tax money to spend on what it considers charity, it deprives me of my freedom to give freely, it deprives me of the joy of giving, and takes away a responsibility from me that I treasure. What is worse, when I forced to do something, I resent it even if that something is something that I would have otherwise voluntarily done.

When the government taxes me to do charity, it is to me morally and functionally equivalent to someone putting a gun to my head and robbing me to help a poor person. Regardless of what the money is going to be used for, robbery is immoral and unethical.

{To be continued.}

]]>6Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=106032014-07-15T19:49:39Z2014-07-15T19:49:39ZContinue reading →]]>“The characteristic feature of present-day policies is the trend toward a substitution of government control for free enterprise. Powerful political parties and pressure groups are fervently asking for public control of all economic activities, for thorough government planning, and for the nationalization of business. They aim at full government control of education and at the socialization of the medical profession. There is no sphere of human activity that they would not be prepared to subordinate to regimentation by the authorities. In their eyes, state control is the panacea for all ills.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=105812014-06-26T17:16:00Z2014-06-26T17:11:15ZContinue reading →]]>Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote “A few thoughts as we complete a month in office.” I came across it in QUARTZ. QZ requested annotations. Someone named Vincent Lee did a fine job of summarizing the letter. Here are the annotations:

I’m your pal.

I love that people love me.
My job is hard.
But I have confidence in myself.
I like my new colleagues, here’s hoping we’ll get on.
Here’s also hoping the state heads will get along with me.
Did I mention my job is hard? I can use some slack…
Let’s remember how bad the previous dynasty was.
I’ll be using that memory as a mandate.
Thanks again for loving me, you won’t be disappointed.

If the first month sets the tone for the remaining, I am afraid that significant needed changes will not happen. Good to have a sincere, hardworking, nationalistic leader. That was a needed change. But sincerity, diligence and nationalism — while necessary — are not sufficient. What is needed is the vision and determination to formulate policies that are consistent with the fundamental principles of good governance and economic prosperity.

Here’s hoping for some fundamental change.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=105752014-06-25T07:33:31Z2014-06-25T07:16:37ZContinue reading →]]>Thirty-nine years have passed since that day when Indira Gandhi decided that Indians had enough of “democracy” and it was time that she dictated to them. Indians did what they have always been good at: they obeyed. Instead of resisting, they obeyed. Our problem, as Howard Zinn used to say, is not civil disobedience; our problem is civil obedience.

Emergency ended on 23rd March, 1977. Did the people learn much? No. She won a landslide victory and once again became the prime minister in January 1980. She was right: the people did not deserve freedom. The people believed that they were free but in truth it was — and still is — an illusion. Frank Zappa said it best. “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

Indira Gandhi was an evil person. Indians suffered much because of her and her spawn. However it was well-deserved. It’s all karma, neh?

Note: The source of that Howard Zinn quote is from an opening statement in a 1972 debate at Johns Hopkins. Read the transcript here.

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; . . . Even in Stalin’s Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.

I agree. For the record I should state that I agree with Zinn on many, but not all, matters.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=105552014-06-16T13:26:19Z2014-06-16T13:26:19ZContinue reading →]]>This screen capture of an India Today tweet is from just six months ago but feels like much longer. Posted here for the record.

If you had the luck of the Indians
You’d be sorry and wish you were dead.
If you had the luck of the Indians
You’d wish you was English instead!

I have substituted “Indians” for “Irish” in the song “The Luck of the Irish” by John Lennon.

I was born and brought up in India. By most measures, I did get a decent schooling in India. But my education did not expose me to any even remotely accurate version of history. What little “history” was taught was a heap of lies over a handful of selected politically correct sanitized facts about India’s past. The horrors that the Islamic invaders and the European colonial rulers of India committed on Indians were carefully hidden.
Many of my closest friends are Irish. I learned a bit of Irish history as a consequence. Like the Indians, the British brutalized the Irish. We Indians and Irish have something in common: tortured, exploited, and killed by the British.

How brutal was the British Raj is something that most Indians — yours truly included — don’t have any clue about. After all, the Indian education system is government controlled and the government (so far) is just British Raj 2.0. School text books can only have what the government wishes you to know. Neither Nehru nor Gandhi had any reason to really expose the monstrous deeds of the British. But thanks to the internet and the web, people have the opportunity to get a better understanding of what really happened and why.

You must read Rajnikant Puranik’s piece “The Brutalization of India by the British–Part 1″ — and weep:

And now the song by John Lennon, MBE. MBE of course stands for “Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.” Lennon was English, not Irish. And he was decorated by the British. Yet he wrote a song condemning the British for what they did to the Irish. The man had integrity.

The Luck of the Irish

If you had the luck of the Irish
You’d be sorry and wish you were dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
And you’d wish you was English instead!

A thousand years of torture and hunger
Drove the people away from their land
A land full of beauty and wonder
Was raped by the British brigands! Goddamn! Goddamn!

If you could keep voices like flowers
There’d be shamrock all over the world
If you could drink dreams like Irish streams
Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn

In the ‘Pool they told us the story
How the English divided the land
Of the pain, the death and the glory
And the poets of Auld Ireland

If we could make chains with the morning dew
The world would be like Galway Bay
Let’s walk over rainbows like leprechauns
The world would be one big Blarney stone

Why the hell are the English there anyway?
As they kill with God on their side
Blame it all on the kids the IRA
As the bastards commit genocide! Aye! Aye! Genocide!

If you had the luck of the Irish
You’d be sorry and wish you was dead
You should have the luck of the Irish
And you’d wish you was English instead!
Yes you’d wish you was English instead!

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=105212014-06-06T20:31:01Z2014-06-06T16:28:41ZContinue reading →]]>I am meeting an informal group of people who are interested in India’s economic growth. It is on Sunday 8th June at 4:30 PM in Sunnyvale, CA. The discussion will focus around India’s future trajectory and what are possible barriers to the real transformation of India.

Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi’s administration can be considered to be a “phase transition” for India’s economy, to borrow a concept from thermodynamics. Phase transitions are abrupt, often discontinuous changes in systems that alter the degrees of freedom available to it. A familiar example of such a transition is the change from ice to water. Under Modi’s administration, India’s phase transition is likely to be from an economically bound state to an economically free state.
The Indian economy has been noteworthy for being unable to develop despite many favorable conditions and factors. India has a deep history and a rich culture. It is fairly well-endowed with natural resources, and has adequate physical and human capital. It can profit from the accumulated understanding of what works from the experiences of other countries that developed before. Finally, it has available for its use the kind of technology that other countries did not have at the time of their development.

And yet after 67 years of becoming politically independent, India has failed to achieve the status of even a middle-income nation. The explanation for this is most likely that India has not been economically free.

The linkage between economic freedom and economic prosperity is robust and enduring. That relationship has been analytically and empirically validated. The Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of the World 2013 Annual Report” ranks India’s economic freedom at 111th out of 152 countries it surveyed. It notes: “Nations that are economically free out-perform non-free nations in indicators of well-being.”

India’s colonial legacy is a key to understanding why India lacks economic freedom. Under the British Raj, India was not economically free because economic freedom is not consistent with the basic purpose of colonization: exploitation and extraction. Those who took over power after the British left found the existing system quite suitable for their own purposes. British Raj 1.0 gave way to British Raj 2.0. The relationship between the government and the people continued to be one of ruler and subject.

That relationship is now set to change because the objective of the new administration is in sharp contrast with what went before. For almost all of its post-colonial history, India’s government has been either directly or indirectly controlled by the Nehru-Gandhi family. Jawaharlal Nehru, was an ardent believer in Soviet-style socialism. India’s economy languished with GDP growth around 3 percent per year, the “Nehru rate of growth.”

Until now, India could not have followed a path of economic development through suitable non-socialist policies because it would have implied a repudiation and rejection of Nehruvian socialism — which has been the holiest of cows in a land full of holy cows.

Modi of course is not related to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Not just that, he is an outsider to New Delhi and unlike those who preceded him, Modi is not beholden to anybody. He has the freedom to make different policies and thus put India on a development path that India should have taken but did not take — the path of economic development.

The broad outlines of Modi’s economic policies are easy to see. Not only has he been outspoken about it but as the chief minister of Gujarat state, he has followed them for the last dozen years. These policies are consistent with this stated objective of making India economically prosperous.

India’s biggest challenge is to free a few hundred million people from poverty. The necessary (but not sufficient) condition for that is if the economy grows rapidly at the potential 10 percent GDP growth rate per year. This growth has to be accompanied by increased employment, which can only be achieved through an expansion of the manufacturing sector. Labor will to migrate from the agricultural sector to manufacturing, raising both average productivity and aggregate production.

India’s manufacturing sector will certainly grow under Modi’s leadership. He has been remarkably successful in attracting domestic and foreign investment to Gujarat. India can become the destination for low-cost manufacturing. One can safely predict that there is going to be a manufacturing boom in India.

“Minimum government, maximum governance” and “government must not be in the business of business” are two of his favorite phrases. Over the socialist years, the government and the public sector have gotten bigger and dysfunctional. The power of those in government has grown consequently, and the inevitable outcome has been — as Lord Acton warned — corruption.

India rates as one of the most corrupt places to do business. Because Modi does not tolerate corruption, the level of public corruption will decline and in a few years, India will join the ranks of the least corrupt nations.

Objectives matter because they alone determine the outcome. The objectives of a leader translate into performance of the organization through specific policies. Because Modi’s objective is economic growth and development, and not personal enrichment, one can reasonably expect India’s economic fortunes to change.

It will be an India which is investment friendly. As he puts it, “no red tape, only red carpet.” The government will become leaner and more efficient. The public sector will shrink even as the private sector grows. Indian entrepreneurs have so far only been allowed to flourish outside India will find India a great place to do business.

Indians will have their economic freedom and with it their long-awaited economic prosperity. India’s phase transition has begun.

]]>18Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=104632014-04-30T20:47:17Z2014-04-30T20:47:17ZContinue reading →]]>I am back in Brussels. Accurately speaking, I am in Leuven. I arrived at Brussels airport this morning from Mumbai (Jet Airways). It was overcast and 10 degrees Celsius on arrival at 7:30 AM. Quite a change from 35+ degrees C in Mumbai. Tomorrow is the start of a road trip to Marseilles and Nice for three days. Cheers.
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=104482014-10-05T17:49:46Z2014-04-20T17:15:50ZContinue reading →]]>So far I have asked around 10,000 Indians if they have read the Indian Constitution. Not one of them admitted to having read it. A few say yes initially but when probed a bit admit that they haven’t really read the whole thing. Some claim to have read the preamble. That is like saying that they have seen the movie merely because they have seen the ad in the newspaper or have had lunch because they checked out the lunch menu.
The constitution is not a holy book, to be kept on an alter and worshiped, to be believed but not examined, to be considered divinely inspired and therefore implicitly trusted.

With very rare exceptions, all Indians whom I have met believe that the constitution is great and wonderful. The operative word is “believe.” Although they have not read it, they are nevertheless fully convinced that it is simply marvelous.

A very intelligent, well-read, awesomely informed, truly articulate, highly educated friend of mine just a few days ago confessed that he did not even know how long the Indian constitution was.

It is a pathetic state of affairs. A document that lays the foundations of a nation, which lies at the core of what the nation is about, which dictates what the government is about, which informs all policies that affect every aspect of public affairs and the lives of all citizens is a closed book. Not only is the constitution unread, it is probably unreadable.

An informed citizenry is the necessary precondition for a functioning democracy. Widespread ignorance of the constitution is inconsistent with any meaningful democracy.

In my opinion, the constitution is the fountainhead of all of India’s troubles. Unless and until it is replaced, India will continue to languish at the bottom of the heap. Scrap it and write one that is good and worth a read.

]]>10Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=104412014-04-16T09:22:36Z2014-04-16T09:22:36ZContinue reading →]]>TIME has a brief piece on an interesting change in what the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) tests. “Students will no longer be rewarded for the rote memorization of semi-obscure definitions. Instead, the words that the SAT will highlight in vocabulary questions will be “high utility” words that students are likely to encounter in life and reading beyond those four hours in the testing location. Even the most studied students won’t be able to breeze through vocab sections, matching a word with definition B by reflex; they’ll have to read and gather from the passage exactly what a word means.”
]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=104332014-04-15T08:19:33Z2014-04-15T08:18:22ZContinue reading →]]>

The Bengali calendar is loosely tied with the Hindu Vedic solar calendar, based on the Surya Siddhanta. As with many other variants of the Hindu solar calendar, the Bengali calendar commences in mid-April of the Gregorian year. The first day of the Bengali year therefore coincides with the mid-April new year in Mithila, Assam, Burma, Cambodia, Kerala, Manipur, Nepal, Odisha, Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and Thailand. [Wiki.]

The wiki also states that

Poila Boishakh coincides with the New Years in many other Southern Asian calendars, including:

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=104232014-04-13T04:51:04Z2014-04-13T04:41:08ZContinue reading →]]>Today is the anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, was a seminal event in the British rule of India. On 13 April 1919, a crowd of non-violent protesters, along with Baishakhi pilgrims, had gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh garden in Amritsar, Punjab to protest the arrest of two leaders despite a curfew which had been recently declared. On the orders of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, the army fired on the crowd for ten minutes, directing their bullets largely towards the few open gates through which people were trying to run out. The dead numbered between 370 and 1,000, or possibly more. [Wiki.]

The picture on the left shows the narrow passage to Jallianwala Bagh Garden through which the shooting was conducted. The question is: who killed those hundreds of Indians — men, women and little children — in cold blood at the orders of Gen Dyer? They were Indians. Indians killed Indians mercilessly, in cold blood. They always do. Indians kill Indians and help foreigners rule India. Here’s some evidence that you must read to understand that point.
The so-called “father” of the Indian Constitution, Mr B. R. Ambedkar, wrote this in a piece addressed to the British before India’s independence:

British Rule in India owes its very existence to the help rendered by the Untouchables. Many Britishers think that India was conquered by the Clives, Hastings, Cootes and so on. Nothing can be a greater mistake. India was conquered by an army of Indians and the Indians who formed the army were all Untouchables. British Rule in India would have been impossible if the Untouchables had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of Plassey which laid the beginning of British Rule or the Battle of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these fateful battles the soldiers who fought for the British were all Untouchables.

The invaders have always been vanishingly few relative to the Indians at any point in Indian history. Their repeated conquest and rule of India has always been possible because of treachery.

Consider the modern rule over India by an Italian woman. It is not as if she brought an Italian army to rule over India. No, she was helped by Indians to loot India.

What does this say about us Indians, and particularly Hindus? It says that we lack a sense of honor, a sense of fairness, a sense of morality.

Shame. Shame on Indians. Shame on Hindus.

]]>10Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103942014-03-26T18:47:31Z2014-03-25T11:24:58ZContinue reading →]]>Considering how ubiquitous talk about GDP and growth rates is, it is noteworthy that as a concept it is of fairly recent vintage. The idea of having a measure of the “income” of a country was invented by the American economist Simon Kuznets for use in a US Congressional report in 1934. The “product” part of gross domestic product refers to the production of goods and services. It is an aggregate measure–and hence a macroeconomic measure. It is a measure of the total amount of goods and services that an economy produces. Full disclosure: I am not a macroeconomist and find the subject painfully boring. But here I am only discussing the limited idea of GDP.
Why am I discussing GDP? Someone on twitter asked me a few questions related to GDP recently. Here’s a consolidated & edited text from several tweets from her:

“We know that GDP growth rate is down 4% points from 2004. But most of us do not clearly understand the impact it is having on our lives . . . What is the loss we suffer if GDP growth rate falls by 1% point . . . Also if China grows at 10% and India grows at 8%, can the huge gap be understood by ordinary people?”

The wiki article on GDP is quite good but perhaps a brief informal discussion on what it means may be of help. So here goes.

GDP refers to production. Indeed, it refers to the total amount of goods and services produced in a nation or a state.

Technical note: It gets tiring to all the time write “goods and services.” So I am going to use a technical term that I favor: stuff. Everything that an economy produces, everything that we consume, everything that we trade, etc. . . . is stuff. End of technical note.

Now, there has to be some metric to state what that total amount of stuff the economy produces. It would be easy if there was only one kind of stuff — say wheat. Then we could just say, “This economy produced eleventeen million tons of wheat last year and that economy produced brilligteen million tons.” But real economies produce a variety of stuff such as shoes and ships and sealing wax and computers and dentistry and dance instructions. A numeraire has to be chosen. If you guessed that the numeraire is money, you are right on the money.

The process goes thus:

1. They figure out how much of each kind of stuff was produced.
2. Then they figure out the market prices at which the various kinds of stuff were sold.
3. Then they multiply the numbers of (1) and with the corresponding numbers of (2) above, and add them all up to get the GDP — a great big number which is expressed in $ or rupees or whatever currency makes sense.

It is a total mystery to me how the whole process takes place. An economy produces a stupendous variety of stuff, as noted before. How they figure out how much of what was produced is something I marvel at. I guess some kind of statistical sampling and reporting is involved in the process. I could find out if I really wanted to, but I don’t because I like some things to remain mysterious. It adds charm to life. Anyway, let’s move along.

So here’s the interesting point. GDP refers to aggregate or total production. Therefore it also has to refer to aggregate or total income. What we produce is what we earn as income (in the aggregate.) Certainly, at the lower levels of aggregation, this rigid identity between income and production does not necessarily hold. One can produce a lot and yet receive a low income, and vice versa.

GDP Growth

We live in the modern world. One of the features of the modern world which distinguishes it from the pre-modern world is that in our world, the GDP grows appreciably (for most parts of the world.) In the past, the GDP growth rate was so small that hundreds of years would pass by before you could sense any change. For most of human history, things used to be static. Things around you were pretty much what it used to be during your grandfather’s time, and your grandchildren would live a lives hardly different from yours.

Now it is different. My life would have been unimaginable to my grandfather, and no one can imagine how different the world will be in 50 years from now. It began with what is commonly called the “Industrial Revolution” around 1750 CE. That’s just two and a half centuries ago. The amount of stuff that the people of the world started producing (and naturally therefore consuming) began to grow. Things are changing and the pace of change is accelerating at an exponential rate.

The word “exponential” is often misused but in the case of the growth rate of GDP (and related matters), it makes perfect sense because we often talk about GDP growth rate for a range of years. The amount added each year gets compounded as the years go by. If the rate of growth is, say, 10 percent a year, then the amount 100 will grow by 10 units the first year but on the second year it will grow by 11 units (that’s 10 percent of 110), and by 12.1 units the next year, and so on.

A nice rule of thumb is that a growth rate of g percent per year will double the initial amount in 70/g years. So if the GDP growth rate is 7 percent per year, the GDP will double in 10 years; if the growth rate is 3.5 percent a year, then the GDP will double in 20 years.

It is hard for us to really intuitively understand exponential growth. The difference between, say, 5 and 7 is not much to write home about. But if you are compounding something over a significant number of periods, the difference explodes. $100 grows to be $800 at 5 percent growth rate in 42 years, but at 7 percent rate of growth, it grows to $1600 in 40 years.

What If

Allow me to quote an old post which addresses your question about how GDP and GDP growth rates affect our lives:

India’s actual rate of economic growth averaged over 60 years is around 2.1 percent per year, what I call the “Nehru rate of growth” because Nehru was the principal author of India’s socialist development policy. As I argue below, it is one of the greatest man-made disasters in the world. It was totally flawed, and the misery that it caused (and still causes) was entirely avoidable. Considering the present state of India is distressing but it is useful if considered side by side with an alternative that was possible. The counterfactual has to help move us to take a different path. Later on in the series, we will discuss what we have to do.

In the alternative scenario, I used a 6 percent long-run average annual per capita growth rate. Is that reasonable? Yes it was easily possible, and what is more, it still is. India is large, just like China. In 1978, they were both at the bottom of the economic heap, neck and neck in most measures of economic development. China got lucky and its leader Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) steered China out of the socialist trap and made it into a market economy open to foreign investment. China’s economic growth was impressive, to say the least. Over a period of 30 years, it grew at an average around 8 percent annual growth rate. Today China’s economy is at least four times larger than India’s.

India could have easily become a market-oriented, open economy by 1950, and had an average 6 percent annual growth rate for 60 years to become at present a middle-income country. India’s per capita annual income could have been around $10,000, ten times of what it actually is. Its GDP could have been $11 trillion, and India, instead of China, would be the largest economy in the world second to the US.

Economic growth at 6 percent annual rate works marvels. India would have eradicated poverty by 1970. Around 1950, India had around 250 million below the poverty line (out of a total population of less than 400 million.) Today it has 700 to 800 million below the poverty line. That’s what Nehruvian socialism has achieved – a tripling of the absolute number of poor people. Had India followed the alternative model, mass scale poverty would have been history in less than a generation. Today the problem of poverty is much harder to solve because the solution has been delayed so long.

Mass scale poverty has its fellow travelers. India has the largest number of illiterates in the world. India has the largest number of malnourished people in the world. Reports indicate that around half of India’s children below the age of five are malnourished. The overwhelming number of Indians do not have clean drinking water, access to toilets, access to schools, health care, . . . the list is long and heartbreaking. Rural Indians eke out a Hobbesian existence: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Indian farmers are a distressed lot, and one famous journalist has made his entire career solely by reporting on farmer suicides.

There’s more to life than economic growth. Economic prosperity is not sufficient but it is definitely necessary when hundreds of millions are trapped in poverty. China provides evidence that six percent growth is possible for a large country. India had all the necessary precondition – except one – for becoming a middle-income country by now. If it had, this is what we would have had. (We will explore that one missing factor later in the series.)

If India had become a middle-income country, Indians would have read about abject poverty in history books and seen it in documentaries, not actually seen it cities, towns and villages as they do today. India would have been 100 percent literate. All Indians would have had at least graduated high school. India would have had scores of educational and research institutes ranked globally which would have attracted hundreds of thousands of students from the world over.

Indians would have been healthy and their life expectancy close to that of any developed nation. More importantly, they would have had an enviable quality life. India would have had clean, livable cities – and lots of them – hundreds of modern cities with impressive infrastructure. The structure and composition of the Indian labor force would have been mostly in manufacturing and services, and about 10 percent in agriculture. With only of small fraction of the overall labor in agriculture, farm incomes would have been sufficient to make the life of farmers worth living.

With six percent annual growth over a long period, amazing things happen. Income growth has two effects. First, it allows greater consumption. That itself is a good thing if one is below the world average (or at least below a certain minimum.) The second effect of a large income is that savings can be larger – which means that investment can be higher. What you don’t consume, you can invest. This is true both of an individual and a collective.

Individuals grow their assets with savings. They end up with houses and other durable goods, all of which makes life more pleasant and people more productive. Similarly, with higher income, national assets increase. Nations can invest in assets such as manufacturing facilities, and infrastructure such as needed for transportation (roads, ports, railways, airports), housing, water supply and waste management, power generation, heavy machinery, facilities for hospitals, schools and universities, recreational, tourism, etc. All assets have positive feedback effects: the more you have, the more productive the economy becomes, which raises incomes, which then go on to increase the investable savings for building more assets.

GDP measures wealth. GDP itself is denominated in money terms. Actually, all kinds of wealth is expressed in monetary terms. This is a terrible thing because people start believing money is wealth. This confusion has really terrible consequences. Next time.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103762014-03-17T03:08:54Z2014-03-17T03:08:54ZContinue reading →]]>Wishing you all an enjoyable Holi. Like all Hindu festivals, this one has multiple meanings. I cannot vouch for the accuracy but this site has some information on what Holi is about. Here’s a video of a Holi celebrations in 2012 in Utah. The creators of this video, The Good Line, say, “This was filmed in Spanish Fork, Utah (of all places). The Hari Krishna temple holds this festival every March. It has grown into the largest Holi celebration in the western hemisphere. Everybody is more than welcome to come!” (Vimeo.) The videography is spectacular.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103722014-03-15T07:32:53Z2014-03-15T07:32:53ZThe Dalai Lama is a rare celebrity I admire. “10 Questions for the Dalai Lama”:

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103632014-03-11T12:43:13Z2014-03-11T12:43:13ZSorry I have not been writing on this blog at all. But I intend to very soon. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of pretty pictures. Leave a comment if there’s anything you’d like to say. Cheers.

Today is Maha Shivratri — Great night of Shiva. Shiva (the auspicious one) is known by many names — Mahadeva or Mahesh (the great god), Bholenath (the simple god since he is an ascetic), Parameshwara (the supreme god), and Nataraja (the king of dance). I am partial to Shiva as the Nataraj. He dances the Tandava, the dance of destruction and creation.

The image of the Nataraja above is from CERN headquarters. Click on the image for more details.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103382014-02-21T15:36:18Z2014-02-21T15:36:18ZContinue reading →]]> The Indian National Congress (INC) is on the way out. An English civil servant, Allan Octavian Hume (1829 – 1912), founded the party in December 1885. As it happens, Hume is also known as “the father of Indian ornithology”. Not just that, he was a theosophist. Go read his brief wiki bio. He was an impressive man. Anyway, now nearly 130 years old, the Congress is in terminal decline. A foreigner — an accomplished Englishman — gave birth to it and another foreigner — an almost uneducated Italian woman — is presiding over it as it takes it final gasps. The Congress’s most celebrated leader is undoubtedly Shri M K Gandhi, aka “Mahatma Gandhi”, a Gujarati; and it is another Gujarati who is instrumental in putting the dying Congress out of its misery. The parentheses that enclose the Congress are ironic. And now for a bit from an IndiaFacts Nov 2013 article by Gautam Sen, below the fold.

The sight of a sombre Manish Tiwari denouncing Narendra Modi in hushed tones of angst, for suggesting the ailing imported empress abdicate in favour of her befuddled son, illustrated poignantly the ignominy to which the GOP has descended. The party that fought for Indian independence is now in the thrall of an uneducated and greedy foreigner of no noticeable merit. The Congress party is a mere appendage to her utterly vacuous imperious airs that hint at innate supremacy. The bevy of nauseous courtiers like Tiwari, Khurshid and Ramesh and others, less versed in the Queen’s English, but perfectly capable of shocking obsequiousness in Hindi, have sunk to the lowest possible depths. Modi is having a lot of fun puncturing the inflated egos of these degraded court jesters and their absurd leaderene, while precipitating delighted mirth in his vast audiences.

You would imagine that she might have the nous to identify competent speechwriters who would get basic facts right. But her recent piqued Chhattishgarh litany, in wooden Hindi, recited otherwise from the Latin scriptis; something was profoundly amiss. It seems their only qualification is shameless obeisance and unctuous obedience, hence the serial hilarity the speeches of mother and son invariably provoke. Rahul Gandhi may have been awarded the M.Phil. Degree by Trinity, Cambridge, tutored by an earnest Bangladeshi economist and, no doubt, monitored solicitously by the family’s own Nobel laureate, its President at the time. But his autistic patter reveals he gained little from it. Either the degree had become worthless by the time he had supposedly studied for it and evidently passed three of its four component papers, or there is something profoundly amiss. It is unlikely the truth will ever be known.

The Congress is really no longer a political party at all. It is entirely a vehicle for the perpetuation of a clapped out dynasty that has outsourced itself socially and culturally from India. It supreme leader and her family party abroad, enjoy healthcare in elite foreign hospitals and spend like owners of Pharaonic wealth, while hypocritically feigning concern for India’s poor. Their wasteful programmes for alleged upliftment are a form of double jeopardy. It robs India of painfully accumulated savings, in shameless attempts to bribe the electorate, while the political incumbents loot simultaneously without respite. It is a disgrace bereft of moral limits, cynically bolstered by a corrupt, anti-national media and a retinue of politicians who behave no better than domestics. Their plunder would have made Nadir Shah blanch and its intolerable brazenness prompts rage in anyone with a modicum of honesty and insight!

If Shri Modi’s office does receive a request for a meeting from Nancy Powell, it should respond with, “Ms Powell is welcome to seek an appointment. The request will be appropriately considered and processed through the standard channels in the order received.” I don’t see why Narendrabhai should bother to meet Ms Powell, considering that he has other things on his plate — or more precisely in his chai kettle.

I hope @narendramodi politely refuses to meet the US ambassador. NM's office should say that he's busy having rallies, chai and charcha.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103132014-02-08T08:02:47Z2014-02-08T08:02:47ZContinue reading →]]>Every day in every which way, Kejriwal figures out a new drama to be in the media spotlight. It seems to me that he is not acting alone — and by that I don’t mean that he does not have a bunch of very able sidekicks. He certainly has visible support. What concerns me is the invisible support. Are invisible hands guiding him? Here’s what I got in a forwarded email. I cannot vouch for its content. You be the judge. I am just posting it for the record. The original was in Hindi and I asked a friend (Thanks, Amit) to translate it into English.

Sub: 10lakh people called from America for Kejriwal, what was the contribution of Aadhar card in this and how did the data reach America? Is Aadhar card an American conspiracy?
Another explosive post that bares open the mystery behind Kejriwal . . . Friends, please read it, share it or copy paste it but do publicize this important information . . . A deep conspiracy is being hatched to enslave this country . . . Is America seeing Arvind Kejriwal as a useful tool, just like it saw Imran Khan in Pakistan?

To understand this, one has to look at Arvind’s background. Not just Kabir, Shimrit Li and Ford foundation but even some Indian industrialists are also involved in this effort. Gradually one thing is leading to another and the picture is evolving. Suddenly there is talk of looking at the political activities of Ford foundation in not just India but whole of Asia. It is identified as an American entity.

Kavita N Ramdas is the head of Ford foundation in South Asia. She is the eldest daughter of Admiral Ramdas. Admiral Ramdas is Arvind Kejriwal’s godfather. Admiral Ramdas was with Arvind Kejriwal even at the time of his nomination. Admiral Ramdas’ wife Leela Ramdas was made the chief of committee constituted under the Vishakha guideline. Ramdas is also a recipient of Magsaysay Award. The question therefore arises – is the Ramdas family helping Arvind Kejriwal on the instructions of Ford foundation?

Ford’s involvement in the politics of Asia can also be understood by this another example. Gauhar Rizvi, an ex office bearer of Ford foundation, now works as advisor to the Bangladeshi Prime Minister. Not just Kabir, Shimrit Li and Ford foundation but even some Indian industrialists are also involved in this effort.

Mr Narayan Murthy, Infosys Chief and member of Ford foundation, had also provided financial assistance of INR 25lac each year in 2008-2009 to Arvind Kejriwal’s organization. In 2010 when Shimrit joined Kabir, Narayan Murthy increased the assistance to 37lakh from 25lakh earlier. Not just this, Balkrishna a former senior employee of Infosys too joined the Aam Admi Party.

Nandan Nilekani is also linked with Infosys. Nilekani is also the chief of ‘biometric aadhar’ project. As soon as Kejriwal formed government in Delhi, he initiated steps to make Aadhar mandatory. One can understand Aadhar and Nandan as follows. As per information, a NewYork based company MongoDB gets associated with Nandan Nilekani’s Aadhar. This company is assigned the job of preparing the database of Indian citizens. On further enquiry on MongoDB, many startling revelations come forth.

A company called In-Q-Tel is invested in MongoDB. In-Q-Tel is the venture capital arm of CIA. Now it is important to see the link between Nandan Nilekani and Delhi elections. During Delhi elections, there were about 1Mn phone calls from America to India. It is said that they were all in support of Aam Admi party. But this raises several questions.

First question, were these phone calls made by India citizens overseas or an American agency? Second question, how did people in America get access to so many phone numbers from Delhi? This is where Nandan Nilekani’s role comes under suspicion. Actually the Aadhar project that Nandan heads makes phone numbers mandatory. Only someone like Nandan Nilekani would have access to such a large database of numbers. And this is the reason why Kejriwal’s Delhi government is asking for Aadhar numbers. When the SC has ruled making Aadhar a non-madatory requirement, then why is Kejriwal’s government asking for Aadhar numbers? After all what is his compulsion? This compulsion can be understood by the relations between Infosys Chief and Ford foundation. (This report of Rakesh Singh is full of fact based journalism).

That’s it. I don’t know what is going on. Is this some loony conspiracy theory? Could be. If you know, please post a comment. Thanks.

]]>30Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=103062014-02-07T06:24:52Z2014-02-07T06:24:52ZContinue reading →]]>The Italian-born Antonia Maino-led Congress is in deep distress. It appears that the Modi wave tsunami is threatening to smash them to bits and drown the remains. (Previously I had written about the Modi juggernaut.) What are the options open to them? Here is my conjecture.
First is of course if Shri Modi were to meet with an unfortunate accident. Helicopters don’t usually drop out of the sky but in banana republics, aviation accidents are often used to settle political conflicts. Examples: Sanjay Gandhi, YSR Reddy.

Second, some disgruntled jihadis (ok, all jihadis are disgruntled) would plant a bomb at one of the many rallies. A huge boom and that would take care of Maino’s troubles.

Third, Maino makes a deal with Pakistan. For an undisclosed amount and for future concessions if the Italian-Indian Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi were to become the PM, Sharif would start a minor war with India in early April. Then the appointed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would declare “Emergency” and the elections would be postponed. This will give the Italian-Indian Congress some breathing room and allow more time for scenarios 1 and 2 above.

Now you may say that all this is tin-foil hat level crazy conspiracy. I hope it is only my natural paranoia. But what if it isn’t all that crazy a scenario? How does one guard against it?

The way forward is to put this crazy conspiracy in the public domain so that it becomes common knowledge — and thus render the tactic worthless.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102902014-08-06T18:06:14Z2014-02-05T05:56:54ZContinue reading →]]>The Merriam-Webster says about the word shill that its origins are unknown and the first known usage was in 1914. That makes it one hundred years old. I have usually encountered it in US political commentary. I like the sound of the word and it always brings up the almost similar word shrill to mind. The wikipedia describes the word well –

A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with the person or organization.

“Shill” typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that they are an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom they are secretly working. . . .

What brought the word to mind was Medha Patkar. She was on a TV talk show with Arnab Goswami (the same fellow who had that little tête-à-tête with the super-genius, apple of Diggy’s eye, the Italian-Indian shehzada, the pride of the Maino family, etc etc, Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi.) The matter being discussed was Arvind Kejriwal’s hypocrisy.

Kejriwal insists that he will not do something and then goes ahead and does it. He’s gained himself quite a reputation as “Mr U-Turn”. In the current example of a “Kejriwal-turn”, he vehemently, vociferously, publicly insisted that he will not live in a huge government-provided accommodations, but privately he demanded that two huge properties be allocated to him — around 12,000 sqft of living space and 18,000 sqft of lawns.

Among the talking heads was Medha Patkar. She was the sanctimonious shill. Wiki again:

Shill can also be used pejoratively to describe a critic who appears either all-too-eager to heap glowing praise upon mediocre offerings, or who acts as an apologist for glaring flaws. In this sense, the critic would be an implicit shill for the industry at large, possibly because his income is tied to its prosperity.

As an apologist for the lying Arvind Kejriwal, she gave a command performance. She epitomized sanctimonious shill-dom. I tweeted:

Medha Patkar has just demonstrated that she is an unprincipled shill. Shame. Shame. Shame.

From time to time, I get inspired to tweet about Kejriwal. In November last year, I had called him several names. That was before he became the CM of Delhi. Most people did not realize what a sleazy scumbag he was. Last night I tweeted my view of Kejriwal and attached a screen capture of my November tweet:

I am sure that I misunderestimate (thanks GW Bush) Kejriwal’s devious genius. He is communal to the core and could probably teach the insufferable Digvijaya Singh a few tricks. Here’s what I noted the other day:

Arvind "Secular" Kejriwal: "All the success is due to Allah's blessings. We are very small people." Not just small, very small-minded.

So there we are watching the train-wreck that is the Delhi government run by #Dramebaaz #U-turnBaba Kejriwal and apologists like Ms Medha Patkar. Don’t these people have any sense or shame? Don’t they realize that they will be reviled by the millions once their nautanki is over?

Anyway, I reserve my severest criticism for the cretins, the brainless dolts, who supported AAP. Their stupidity will impoverish an already poor country.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102832014-01-30T03:23:27Z2014-01-30T03:13:05ZContinue reading →]]>I like some of the stuff on this blog. Here are a couple.

About a Christian missionary who went to convert a tribe and in the process lost his own faith. (Posted Sept 2010.)

What is Congress but a Fascist Organization? “The Congress at the present stage—what is it but a Fascist organization? Gandhi is the dictator like Stalin, I won’t say like Hitler: what Gandhi says they accept and even the Working Committee follows him; then it goes to the All-India Congress Committee which adopts it, and then the Congress . . .”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102742015-01-22T17:11:06Z2014-01-26T14:10:30ZContinue reading →]]>I can understand that India celebrates “Republic Day” — the day on which the Indian constitution came into force in 1950. I am not a huge big fan of the Indian constitution, as you may probably know. But what really bothers me is the ridiculous parade that they put up all over the country, the main sad event being in the capital New Delhi. That grown-ups would participate in something like this puzzles me at times, and then I remind myself that this is consistent with the general stupidity that blankets this place anyway. This ultimate dog and pony show’s absurdity is matched by the hysterical jingoism of the day.
This fact I have mentioned several times: I have asked over 10,000 people and no one has admitted to having read the Indian constitution in its entirety. They have pious beliefs about its goodness but they have never bothered to read it. I am certain that none of the lawmakers — a strange word to use for those who are generally more corrupt than the average person on the street — of India have read it either. But when it comes to celebrating the adoption of the constitution, there’s enthusiastic participation.

In the bygone pre-TV age, street performers in small towns across India used to put up little circuses to entertain the crowds. These would include acts like five people on a bicycle or tight-rope walking on a rope strung five feet above the ground. I was reminded of that when I caught a glimpse of a dozen people riding one motorbike at the Republic Day parade. This spectacle struggled to rise above the street performers’ level but failed. That this should go on in a parade to celebrate an important anniversary in full view of the world in a nation that wants to be taken seriously is depressing.

Anyway, even this is not why I find the whole parade thing sad and pathetic. It is the display of military hardware. As a rational human being, I am against violence in general. What really makes me see red is organized, large-scale violence which consumes trillions of dollars and millions of lives. It is called “defense” or “national defense.” What is the most remarkable about this global phenomenon of “defense” is that it is entirely one-sided: there is not a single participant in the entire world that is even remotely interested in “offense.” Everyone is persistently, absolutely, perpetually, sincerely for peace and only doing what it needs to do for “defense.”

Take India and its neighbors. Pakistan? It has to defend itself against India. Pakistan, itself, is born pure and has no evil intentions. Its leaders will attest to that under oath. India? It needs defense against Pakistan, Bangladesh, China. China, of course, is only doing what it needs to do to defend itself from India and others. The same story can be told about each of the 200+ countries, all armed to the extent that they can afford or the US needs to sell weapons to.

From my perspective as a free-market laissez faire economist, a limited government is a necessary evil and big government is pure evil. The greatest evil that government does is not that it hinders the creation of economic wealth and limits human freedom; the greatest evil is that it actively destroys economic wealth and kills by the millions directly or indirectly through organized, large-scale violence usually called wars.

Perhaps I have only met a limited sample of people across the world but I have not yet met even one person who harbors any intentions of spending their own resources to kill or even merely harm random strangers. Maybe there are psychotic people who would like to kill others for no reason but they must be a vanishingly small percentage of the global population, and the average person on the street would rather live and let live instead. Yet each nation spends unreasonable amounts on funding huge organizations whose sole purpose is to kill as many and as efficiently as possible. These are called the “defense establishments.”

The great unspeakable and unspoken evil in the world is the military establishment. These militaries would not and could not exist without the support of governments. No corporation or NGO has the power to fund what national governments routinely do for maintaining their respective war machines.

These war machines represent the end product of the worst kind of mass delusion.

There was jubilation among Indians when India became a “nuclear armed” nation. Indians were celebrating their ability to kill humans wholesale efficiently. Pakistanis did the same when it was their turn. Apparently the alternative did not occur to them. The destructive power of popular delusions is most clearly evidenced by the jingoistic celebrations of weapons of mass destruction by the masses who are its primary targets.

I feel pity for the deluded masses but I reserve my anger for the active participants in the war machinery — the arms manufacturers, the arms dealers, the generals and most of all the politicians who whip up the mass jingoistic fervor that fuels the global war of all against all.

Well, other than that, I think that there’s nothing wrong with a stupid parade with idiotic floats even if it is attended by the VVIP, the VIP and the unwashed ignorant masses.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102712014-01-21T07:33:12Z2014-01-21T07:33:12ZContinue reading →]]>I arrived in India today early morning. The Jet Airways flight from Brussels to Mumbai was delayed because of congestion at Mumbai airport. Passport control and customs were easy, however. For the next few weeks I will be writing from India. Let me know what’s on your mind.
]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102622014-01-19T22:09:15Z2014-01-19T22:09:15ZContinue reading →]]>A nation’s prosperity eventually depends on its policies. The policies that obtain, in turn, depend on the objectives of the policymakers. Who these policymakers are is usually determined by the collective — through some democratic process but regardless of the details, the policymakers are ultimately chosen by consensus. No nation can be governed, dictatorially or democratically, without voluntary popular support. The people of India have much to answer for the misgovernance of India. Only when popular sentiment changes can one expect change in the outcome. Shri Narendra Modi appears to be the catalyst that may bring about a change in India.
Listening to Shri Narendra Modi delivering his address at the BJP National Council meeting in New Delhi today gives me hope for India. It was remarkable in many ways. First, he unequivocally named the Congress for failing India. They are all about privilege and not about substance or deed. Their rhetoric is hollow and ineffective. But that was just the start. His substantive comments were about development and progress.

Some of the issues he touched upon are close to my heart. He spoke about urbanization and why it is part of development. Another subject that he stressed was the need for a modern rail transportation system. He made a compelling case for education.

I desperately hope that Shri Modi is elected with a thumping majority in the upcoming general elections in India. I am reminded of a Shakespearean quote. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

The tide for India is coming in. Modi is capable of leading India fortune,to ventures that will realize its potential. India stands at the threshold of a dream. We have to help Modi make that dream a reality.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102492014-01-17T13:08:38Z2014-01-17T13:08:38ZContinue reading →]]>On my way to India, I am in the university town of Leuven, close to Brussels. I have become quite a regular — last year I was here in February and then again in September. Along the way — I think it was on the flight from SFO to New Jersey — I caught a bug. I had a sore throat upon arrival at NJ and over the next few days it became a chest cold. By the time I left for Brussels, I was running a temperature (confirmed with a thermometer on board the flight) and I declared myself officially sick.

Jan 12th Boston

The talk in Boston on Sunday 12th January went well. It was a small gathering of about 40 people in a private home. Dr Mahesh Mehta spoke first, followed by Shri S. Gurumurthy who was in Chennai. I was the last speaker. Since it was Swami Vivekanand’s birth anniversary that day, I began by mentioning that Vivekanand had stressed the importance of physical fitness as a prerequisite to any spiritual development. Analogously, I said, it is important that India become economically strong before it attempts to give to the world whatever of value that it has to give.

As I always do, I began with the matter of India’s lack of economic prosperity. India has almost all of the ingredients necessary for prosperity — natural endowments, human resources, etc — except for good governance. Although the British raj ended in 1947, India continued to suffer the ill-effects of a colonial rule because the institutions that the British had created for their own exploitative and extractive purposes remained intact and fully functional under the new dispensation post political independence. India lacks freedom and therefore it continues to be underdeveloped.

Following my introductory remarks, I took questions from the audience. I find audience-led discussions much more interesting than making speeches because I learn a lot from the questions. The audience was expectedly right of center when it came to social matters. However I have noticed that the right of center are not right of center as regards economics. Most people are still mired in leftist rhetoric. If we follow free market economics, they ask, what about the poor? It takes some doing but eventually it is possible to persuade them that economic prosperity cannot bypass the poor even if one wanted to.

Overall the talk was well-received. I had a great time. A few people had read this blog and I enjoyed meeting them.

The Dramas

I don’t read newspapers nor watch TV news. However, I do keep an eye on twitter and it gives me a good sense of what is going on in India. From what I can tell, the Indian media’s obsession is almost entirely political. Nothing that happens in India is not tainted with politics. Journalism, sports, writing, commerce, entertainment, business, governance, policing, courts — everything is contaminated by politics. An endless stream of small matters march across the stage and capture the collective consciousness briefly, and nothing of any significance is debated or any enduring lessons learned.

The Tejpal drama lasted a couple of weeks. Then came the Khobragade drama. That was replaced by the Kejriwal/AAP drama. The drama du jour is Mani Shakar Aiyar’s statements.

Why do the trivial and the tawdry have such a hold on the popular mind? (I was tempted to write the aam aadmi mind.) Which came first: the trivia which molded the mind to be fascinated with it or did the small mind prompt the media to cater to it?

I find Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party’s success in the Delhi elections very revealing. It is reminiscent of Tehelka’s success. Tehelka’s spiel was that it was out to fight the good fight against corruption and deceit. It would speak truth to power. In truth it was the powerful Congress party that was using Tehelka as a front. I consider AAP to be a “politically weaponized Tehelka” to counter Modi.

Like Tehelka, AAP started off with the grand promise to fighting corruption but beneath its mask (or shall we say beneath the Gandhi topi) is the ugly face of the money-grubbing Congressi. The front end is Kejriwal in his Gandhi topi; the back end is Madam Antonia Maino, aka Sonia Gandhi and her minions led by the despicably dishonest appointed prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Karma is a bitch, as they say. It may take a few weeks or even a few years but Kejriwal will go the same way as others before him. His hubris will be his undoing.

I am going to be in India in a few days. Once again, I will be struck by the awful state that the home country is in. I know that it did not have to be so pathetically poor but it is so because of the small minds that govern its fate. Why do the people of India continue to allow these small-minded crooks to rule over them will continue to puzzle and sadden me.

India should have been a wonderful place for all Indians to be proud of and all the world to admire. It should have been but it is not. The people are distracted from the sad reality by trivial matters and petty dramas.

I am reminded of a favorite line by the great physicist Richard Feynman. In the context of the monotheists’ stories about the nature of the universe, he had said, “The stage is too big for the drama.”

India is too big a stage for the dramas that the media puts on for the entertainment of the masses. The people need to get out of the theater and create a story that is worthy of the stage.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102322014-03-13T10:05:16Z2014-01-08T17:50:28ZContinue reading →]]> As the song goes, ” . . . I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again . . . ” I am off to strange and exotic places. For the first part of the journey, I will be in the East coast, arriving at Newark International on Friday and departing for Brussels next week Wednesday. Lots of places to see and people to meet. Here are the exciting details.
Over here in California, we are having unusual weather. It is unseasonably warm and dry. It has not rained in over a month and the state government is considering declaring it “Level 5″ drought conditions — the highest level. There’s too little snow in the Sierras. Snow-melt is a major source of water. Over on the eastern part of the country, severe cold weather. Some 17,000 flights have been cancelled over the past week due to snow storms. Fortunately for me, the cold front would have moved on by the time I get there.

Friday evening I will be in Monmouth Junction, a town close to Princeton NJ, visiting my friend Balaguru and his family. Saturday evening I will drive to Boston for a Sunday morning meeting. The group is called GIBV — Global Indians for Bharat Vikas. GIBV is an organization of concerned NRIs who want India to be free of the Congress Party. They are working on ensuring that Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister and that BJP gets 272+ seats in the Lok Sabha.

At the Sunday morning meeting in Boston, I will be talking about what needs to be done to rescue the Indian economy. I am told that Shri S Gurumurthy, the Sangh Parivar ideologue, will be joining the meeting remotely from India. From what little I know of his economic prescriptions, I believe that we are on opposite sides of the spectrum. But I am sure that the meeting will be more focused on politics than on economics.

Sunday evening I will be at Yale University in New Haven, CT. I am meeting Vivek Ladsariya and his MBA colleagues who are interested in India. Monday I will be back in NJ. A few meetings are being planned.

Talking of meetings, here’s something that tickled me. A few days ago on Saturday evening, I was at a gathering where I met many interesting people, including one Mr A. The next day Mr A was chatting with his friend Mr B, a retired high-ranking Indian government official who is here with his wife visiting their children.

Mr B says, “You should read this guy Atanu Dey’s blog.”

Mr A says, “Oh, I know him. I met him last evening.”

So Mr A calls me up and says, “Mr B would really like to meet you. Are you free for dinner on Tuesday.” So there I was at Mr A’s house in San Jose last evening. Good food, great conversation, charming company — Mr & Mrs B, and a couple of new friends, Somanjana and Rahul.

I asked Mr B how come he reads my blog. He says that he did not know about my writing until just a week or so before.

It was a Friday and Mr B had gone to his local public library. Unfortunately it was closed. But he met a nice Chinese gentleman (shall we call him Mr C?) and both shared the disappointment of the closed library. Anyhow, they got to chatting and Mr C says to Mr B, “I have been reading one Indian’s blog for many years. You should read Atanu Dey.”

Now, is that funny or what! A Chinese gentleman who reads my blog meets an Indian accidentally who is friends with a man who was at a gathering I was at a few days ago.

This blog has been quite good to me, I tell you. I have met lots of wonderful people and made very good friends. As it happens, Mr and Mrs B have graciously invited me to visit them in their home in Chandigarh the next time I am in India.

Which brings me back to the story of my journey. I will be in Belgium starting Jan 16th, visiting Yoga in Leuven, the university town close to Brussels. Over the weekend, I am giving a talk to a gathering of NRIs in Antwerp. As you probably know, Antwerp has a sizable population of Indian diamond merchants. I have never been to Antwerp. It will be exciting.

I reach Mumbai on 20th evening on a Jet flight from Brussels.

So that’s what’s going on. Be well, do good work and keep in touch.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102232014-10-09T17:14:37Z2014-01-05T22:46:40ZContinue reading →]]> In my favourite Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon (which I have watched at least a dozen times) there’s a very telling scene. Just before a particular fight, Bruce Lee’s opponent, to demonstrate how awesomely tough he is, holds up a wooden board and with one swift punch smashes it to bits. Bruce Lee impassively looks him in the eye and calmly says, “Boards don’t hit back.”
People are different from things. Things are easy to understand and deal with. But people hit back. They behave strategically. They respond to stimulus and they respond to incentives. This is why economies are hard to understand and even harder to manage. But some people labor hard under the delusion that they can do things that are impossible. Tragic consequences of hubris — somewhat like technological hubris.

Technology’s marvelous ability to bring all sorts of amazing things to life (pun intended) frequently inspires hubris and consequent disasters. Science, in contrast, teaches humility because basic scientific advance more often than not sets boundaries to what is possible.

In any area of ignorance, the limits are not known and everything is possible. But with increasing knowledge of science, we begin to know and appreciate the limits. These limits are useful since it prevents people from attempting to do what is impossible. People had no reason to believe that there is an ultimate speed limit until Einstein came along and showed that there was. Thermodynamics tells us that it is pointless to try to invent a perpetual motion machine. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle imposed limits on how precisely you can know position and momentum.

There’s an analogue of this in the social sciences. In a sense, economics is the study of limits. The lesson a careful study of economics teaches is humility. One of the most fundamental lessons is that humans have bounded rationality and very limited ability to comprehend (leave alone direct) complex systems.

To the untutored mind, the idea that some social planner could manage a system as complex as a large economy may not be absurd. But it is. Economics says that it is futile to attempt to centrally plan an economy and shows that the problem is essentially an information and knowledge problem.

Central planning is as much an absurdity as the dreams of a perpetual motion machine. But while a crank wasting his life trying to invent one is mostly harmless, great leaders forcing central planning on poor nations inevitably leads to untold misery, poverty and death. The matter gets worse when an economics ignoramus blinded by technological hubris gets his hands on the controls. That’s when you get the most disastrous outcomes.

(Every time you hear of yet another IIT-trained technologist has got into the business of meddling with the economy, be very afraid. Be very very afraid it the person has been a very successful technologist. And be absolutely terrified when it is an IIT-trained technologist with bureaucratic tendencies and delusions of grandeur. Just saying.)

If there’s one lesson that has been demonstrated too often, it is the lesson that central planning does not work. Why, then, you may ask, does it get repeated so often? The simple answer is that it is good to be the central planner — fame and fortune are the perquisites of the job. Central planning enriches the planner, even as it impoverishes the people.

Unfortunately, once the disease of central planning takes hold, there is no escape. Afflicted with poverty, the people clamor for relief and there’s the central planner, ever ready to do a bit more planning, a bit more controlling, a bit more of messing with prices, with quotas, with more regulations and rules and a bit more of redistribution.

So how does this end? People have to stop being wooden boards. They have to hit back.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102162014-01-02T05:48:06Z2014-01-02T05:48:06ZContinue reading →]]>I hear that the new Delhi government is promising free stuff — water and electricity. It warms the cockles of this economist’s heart. Actually, I lie. What it does is deepen poverty and make people more dependent. Socialists love people to be dependent on them. So what we have in store for India is continued poverty. But we must remember that this is a choice made by the people of India, not something that is imposed from some force outside India. India is poor because Indians choose poverty over freedom. So be it. As I say, it is all karma, neh? (This piece was published on Niti Central today.)Freedom is Incompatible with Free

“War is a judgement that overtakes societies when they have been living upon ideas that conflict too violently with the laws governing the universe . . . Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations.” What Dorothy L Sayers wrote about wars can be usefully applied in the context of poverty. Societies that ignore basic economic principles are overcome by poverty. The most basic of those principles is that nothing can be had for free.

Poverty is a consequence of wrong ways of thinking. The prevalence of poverty shows that there is no shortage of wrong thinking among the movers and shakers of poor nations. The interesting thing is that the poorer the nation is, the more likely it is to suffer from the illusion that things can be had for free. And the illusion feeds back on itself and creates more poverty.

We all know that everything has a cost. Nothing can be had or produced costlessly. You have to either dig it out of the ground, or harvest it or make it or do a hundred different things – all of which requires effort – to produce something. Nothing that is of any use arises unbidden, spontaneously out of thin air. You get to have something when you have paid the cost of producing it.

What, then, does it mean when someone gets given something for free? It certainly does not mean that the free stuff was produced without cost. It just means that the person getting it did not incur the cost of producing it. And it also means that someone else who did incur the cost of producing it did not get rewarded for his or her labour.

Therefore, generally speaking, for there to be “free” stuff, there has to be theft. (The exception is charity – the voluntary giving of things without expectations of reciprocation.) One person cannot get stuff for free without someone else being deprived of what should be rightfully theirs. In societies, this theft is usually mediated through what is called the government. The people in government in such societies have a simple contract with their voters: we will help you in this theft if you support us at the polling booth.

This organized theft has pernicious side-effects. People who are the victims of theft realize that it does not pay to put in effort to produce only to see the result of their efforts being stolen. They therefore rationally respond by not putting in the effort to produce. This leads to less effort and therefore less production. This blunting of the incentive to produce is also seen in those who are the recipients of “free” stuff – if you can get something for free, why bother putting in the effort to produce?

The worst consequence of handing out “free” stuff is that people become dependent on the agent doing the intermediation in the theft, namely the government. Dependency and freedom are opposed concepts. People who depend on handouts from others – including the government – can not be free in any meaningful sense of the term. Accepting free stuff is the quickest road to serfdom.

The sad fact is that people who are determined to become serfs cannot be persuaded to be otherwise. Freedom and free don’t mix.

]]>17Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=102102014-01-01T17:32:23Z2014-01-01T17:32:23ZContinue reading →]]> First post of 2014 and therefore sets the tone for the rest of the year — freedom. Individual freedom. Actually, freedom is about individuals. Collectives are really an abstraction and in reality only individuals exist. So to say that a particular collective is free — Indians or Americans or Africans — what is really meant is that each individual in that collective is free. The question is: what is the individual free from? From coercion by other individuals. The following is an opinion piece published last month in Niti Central.

Best wishes for a wonderful 2014.Of Individual Freedom and Bondage

The centrality of freedom in human affairs is well understood at this stage of human civilizational advance. The story of human civilization is essentially the story of expanding human freedom. Arguably, all prosperity depends on free humans doing what they are naturally inclined to do within the broad constraint of not harming others. Societies that have an internalized understanding of the importance of freedom and strive to grant themselves the greatest degree of freedom in all spheres of human activity prosper.

Examples of societies that don’t enjoy freedom and consequently lag behind those that do are easy to enumerate. Culture, that complex of norms that have evolved over time, broadly determines the degree and extent of freedom that individuals enjoy. The speed and direction of cultural evolution, in turn, drive the expansion of individual freedom. Individual freedom is the foundation upon which freedom of the collective rests. Individual freedom provides the structural elements within which the collective operates and advances the goals of the collective.

The denial of freedom to the individual is unfortunately far too common. It may not be easy to discern this in our own society because we are too immersed in it and therefore lack objectivity. But as external observers of other societies, we see quite easily their faults. It is emotional and physical distance that lends perspective and perspicacity, not superior wisdom. Societies that, for example, deny females equal opportunity in education and other areas of self-expression are easily judged as regressive and backward. We look at them and intuitively feel pity and revulsion.

I make these general observations in the context of India’s regressive position on homosexuals. The Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes homosexual acts. To any impartial observer this attitude is, simply put, regressive, irrational, bigoted and ignorant. The Indian penal code, it should be recalled, was created by the British rulers of colonial India. It was crafted in 1860 and went into effect in 1862. It is 151 years old. There may have been some changes to it but I presume that the basic structure remains the same. That basic nature of the penal code therefore reflects the social mores of the British — including their prejudices, their bigotry, their sense of what is moral, ethical, criminal, etc.

Specifically, article 377 of the IPC encodes Victorian attitudes to homosexuality. I marvel at the fact that Indians apparently struggled for freedom from the British and yet don’t feel the need to claw themselves out from under the rocks that the British piled on them to keep them under control. There’s some serious disconnect with reality: Indians believe that they are no longer under British control but are quite content to be ruled by laws created by the British who were certainly not in the business of giving Indians freedom.

In today’s world, many rules made by the British are seriously outdated, immoral and unethical. The British, like most of the world which is now considered “civilized,” used to persecute and punish homosexuals in the past. It was shameful the way they treated quite harmless people. Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), brilliant playwright and incomparable wit, was hounded and imprisoned. It broke his spirit, a spirit that was gentle, and caring and wise. He had not killed anyone, not even lifted a finger against anyone. His crime? He liked to sleep with other men.

The British society of those times must have tortured untold thousands of unfortunate, harmless people. We only know of the few famous ones. Alan Turing (1912 – 1954), the father of modern computing, was driven to suicide by this kind of insane prejudice. Humanity was denied the full benefit of his enormous genius. It wasn’t he who was immoral but it was the society which was immoral that eventually killed him out of its ignorance and stupidity.

That inhuman and inhumane treatment was not justified then, and it is certainly not justified now. Thankfully, the British, and the rest of what is called the First World, have moved on. They don’t punish homosexuals and criminalize homosexual behavior. But Indians, who are supposedly free of British colonialism, are still under the oppressive rule of a code made by the British. It is hardly comprehensible that Indians subject themselves to such an immoral code. But it is understandable that the code is used by some Indians to hound and persecute other harmless Indians. It is criminally immoral.

The public debate of homosexuality and the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people (LGBT) is rife with irrationality and ignorance. The naturalistic fallacy is encountered frequently. The fallacy involves deriving an “ought” from an “is.” One side says, “It is unnatural” and therefore it should be banned. Well then there are many kinds of human behavior that are also “unnatural” and therefore should be banned. To be consistent, the proponents of that argument should also ban those other things. One of the basic problems with it is the question as to who gets to decide what is natural — and therefore acceptable — and what is not.

The other side responds by pointing out that homosexuality is found in (just take any number) 693 non-human species. The attempt to advance that fact to make moral or justify human homosexual behavior is also the same naturalistic fallacy. Just because something occurs in nature — infanticide for instance occurs quite frequently — does not justify its acceptance in human society.

Another part of the debate relates to whether homosexuality is genetic. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not. To me that is supremely beside the point. Basic decency requires that behavior that neither causes harm to others nor is intended to cause harm should not be punished.

So where do I stand on this issue? Like on all other issues, my position is principles based. In this case, the principle is that of inalienable individual freedom. A person is free to do as he or she pleases as long as he or she does not harm another person. Society has an interest in prohibiting any and only such behavior that harm other people. In all other cases, society has no justification in proscribing behavior. This principle is not complicated to understand and not hard to implement. It does not require huge tomes and learned debate to operationalize.

Whom a person loves, sleeps with, or is intimate with is not my concern and should not be anyone else’s concern other than the people involved. The only requirement is informed consent and absence of any coercion. The individual is sovereign in his abode and in his private life. No one regardless of how high the horse he or she rides on, moral busybodies particularly, has any right to poke their noses into any individual’s affair. If the law says that some learned judges have the right to dictate to some others what they should and should not do in the privacy of their homes, then that law is bad in principle, immoral in intent and fundamentally impossible to administer fairly.

I reject all restrictions over individual freedom with every fiber of my being, regardless of whether those restrictions are based on religious, social or dubious ethical grounds. I especially reject laws that derive from the ignorant illogic of the desert monotheistic religions — the prohibition on homosexuality is one of the more egregious examples of the hardcoded bigotry of those intolerant creeds.

In conclusion, I am saddened to see yet another glaring pointer to the fact that Indian society is not yet a decent society. It is not decent to criminalize people and behavior that is not only intrinsically harmless but actually increases human well-being. Part of the human experience is the joy, companionship and comfort that an individual finds with another person, regardless of gender. The fixation with gender may be natural but it is certainly not decent. And becoming a decent society is only a step to becoming a civilized society in which all persons enjoy their inalienable individual freedoms. Who knows, perhaps the Indians of a few centuries ago were not as bigoted as they have been recently. If that is true, it is a really sad fact.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101982013-12-17T17:04:36Z2013-12-17T17:03:55ZContinue reading →]]>Ruling a banana republic does not require special qualifications

Item: Captain John Wright, 58, is retiring as a senior pilot. He has had a distinguished flying career with 35 years of sitting in the left hand seat in the cockpit, much of it of heavies like the Boeing 747s and Airbus 340s. But it’s time that he hangs up his wings and retires from a job well done. Bluesky Air, the airline that Captain Wright served so competently, has announced that on Capt Wright’s retirement next month, his seat will be occupied by his son Jack. Jack will move from his job as a janitor at Burger King to be the chief pilot at Bluesky Air. He will fly the planes that his father flew.Item: Dr Lovelace, 62, winner of the Nobel prize in medicine 2002 for his pioneering brain surgery technique, has a daughter, Ada, who works at K-Mart as a greeter in Hicksville, OH. She is very pretty and cute. The Nobel committee has considered the matter in depth and determined that the 2003 Nobel prize in medicine will be awarded to Ms Ada Lovelace. She will be performing brain surgery at the Sloan-Kettering hospital.

Item: Mr Lallu Reddy, 61, the prime minister of the People’s Democratic Banana Republic of Pooristan, was assassinated recently. Mr Reddy’s corrupt governance kept Pooristan among the least developed countries in the world. Following his demise, his son Ballu Reddy, 22, was popularly elected as the prime minister. Ballu will make time from his occupation of womanizing and general debauchery to take up his father’s job of ruling Pooristan.

You know that the first two scenarios are as unlikely to happen as pigs growing wings and flying. Not in the wildest fantasies would it happen that people’s lives are put at risk by giving a job that requires years of hard training to someone’s unqualified son or daughter. It never happens that way.

The third scenario, however, is not far-fetched at all. In your average banana republic, it is rather common for the son or daughter of a corrupt tyrant to inherit the job of misruling the country. The only special talent required for the job is that one is especially devoid of all morality and conscience. It is not as if keeping a desperately poor country desperately poor takes any effort. If the father could steal billions without too much trouble, the son can do it too. The son knows how he did it, and so can he. The father developed that skill and the son got to see how it works. He got to know all the crooked people that his esteemed dad did business with. He inherited all the contacts that his father had. That’s perhaps as striking an example of Lamarckian evolution — the inheritance of acquired characteristics — as one can find anywhere.

It would have been a different matter if the prime minister of a country had done a great job of hauling the country from poverty to prosperity. That would be a tough act to follow, and it is unlikely that the progeny of an able leader would also be a great leader. That unlikeliness or improbability gets compounded when successive generations of the great leader’s descendants are considered. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was a great leader. I doubt that his great-grandchildren are anything but average.

Leadership through inheritance is a compelling sign of a poor or a declining nation.

Consider this. Jawaharlal Nehru first, and then his daughter, and then his grandson, and then his grandson’s Italian wife, and then quite possibly his Italian-Indian great-grandson — a succession of inept corrupt people ensuring that India remains impoverished. It’s a job that does not require any special talent; only a marked lack of morality and conscience.

One wonders which came first: corrupt leaders or the poor country. Nehru was perhaps not corrupt although he was certainly incompetent. He was incompetent and how. His incompetence was all encompassing. Domestic affairs, international affairs, economic policies, military policies, international trade, social development — you name it and he was incompetent in it. But in all likelihood he was not corrupt.

Nehru’s progeny not only matched his incompetency but also descended into corruption. With each successive generation, they sank deeper into unfathomable corruption. Indira was corrupt but it did not make the newspaper headlines. She had a firm grip on what the public was allowed to know. But when the going got tough for her, she did what the dictators of banana republics do: ruthlessly suppress any dissent by declaring emergency.

The level of corruption goes up a few orders of magnitude with each generation. Under Antonia Maino, aka Sonia Gandhi, the current corruption deals are of the order of tens of billions of dollars. During her husband’s rule, it was only in the hundred million-dollar range. One doesn’t know for sure but my guess would be that her son’s reign may push the numbers to hundreds of billions of dollars. India is after all a growing economy, and if someone does not rob the country of its wealth, it is in real danger of getting out of poverty. And if that happens, it would be an unmitigated disaster for the Gandhi family. Their rule depends on mass poverty and ignorance.

It is remarkable how the corrupt leaders of third world countries meet very sticky ends. It is especially so in the Indian subcontinent. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India. Military coups are routine in the two Islamic republics. In India, if your last name is Gandhi, you are more likely to be a leader and commensurately more likely to die violently. It is like being in the mafia. While you live, you live high on the hog. When you die, you die like a stuck pig.

So here’s a question. Which came first: the poverty or the corrupt leaders? I think that they are both involved in circular causation. But the start of the cycle must have been incompetence. Incompetent leaders cause poverty which leads to corrupt leaders which cause poverty . . . Is there a way out?

{This is a recycled item — it is a modified version of a piece posted first on this blog in Jan 2011, and recently this appeared in Niti Central.}

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101922014-01-01T22:06:11Z2013-12-16T04:21:02ZContinue reading →]]>Lots of interesting things happening around the world and in India. Those assembly elections were interesting — if you go for that sort of thing; I don’t. The expected death of that great South African leader Nelson Mandela. An interesting ruling by the Supreme Court of India, etc. It basically goes against the most important principle of human social behavior — don’t poke your nose into things that don’t concern you. You mind your expletive business and I will mind my expletive business. Be that as it may, here’s what I tweeted recently. Take a look at them. And leave a comment if there’s something on your mind that I should know about. Here are the tweets that may be interesting.

That’s it for now. Let me know if there’s something that I should address. I am working on a major project right now. Very exciting and all that. So keep in touch, be good and do good work.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101832013-12-12T16:53:50Z2013-12-12T16:51:43ZContinue reading →]]>Social media has a derogatory term for people who enthusiastically support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). They are called “AAPtards”. Perhaps retards is a little too extreme; maybe these people are merely seriously deluded, gullible, somewhat ignorant, easily misled, et cetera, et cetera. But that’s not the worst of it. Kejriwal is a serious threat to the possibility of India giving the Maino-led UPA a quick burial. Here’s why —AAP: The transition to Nehruvian Socialism 2.0

Elections are to a large extent partly popularity contests and partly driven by narrowly defined individual self-interest expressed in a group setting. The popularity contest is peculiarly of the kind what is known as a Keynesian beauty contest where the individual votes not on her own assessment of the suitability of the candidates but instead on her beliefs about the others’ assessment of the candidates. That makes it quite possible that the winner of elections is not really the most competent but instead is one who has been able to mold public perception in his favor. This is true of all elections in general but more so in so-called developing countries where personalities matter more than issues. Personalities dominate over issues primarily because issues are harder to evaluate than personalities. Note it is personality and not character which drives the calculus of choice. That fact is illustrated by unending examples of characterless elected officials.

I make these general remarks to provide the context for my assessment of Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party. To me, Kejriwal epitomizes all that is wrong with Indian politics. That is saying something when you consider that Indian politics is riddled with stupidity, dynastic succession, public corruption, insane populism, crude factionalism, blatant pandering, naked dishonesty, extreme selfishness, myopia and other repulsive features. The major concern that I have with the AAP and its leadership relates to its agenda.

It began as a coalition of people fighting against public corruption. Public corruption, we must remember, is a phenomenon that is directly linked to the government. There cannot be public corruption without an active involvement of the government. Public corruption arises out of a combination of power that wields control, and a lack of accountability and responsibility. If this basic feature of the problem of public corruption is not understood, all actions to eradicated corruption or even to curb it is going to be not just futile but could make the problem much worse. That lack of understanding by the group called “India Against Corruption” was the glaring problem with it. It led to the quite mindless proposed solution of creating yet another layer of government with even more control and even less accountability to fight the problem of public corruption which, as I note above, is because of too much government, not too little. It is akin to bringing more gasoline to put out a raging fire.

Regardless of motivations good or bad, all do-gooders are at some level people who want control over others. The desire to control and direct others is present in all to some degree but it reaches saturation levels in those who are convinced that only if they had greater control over people would the world become a better place. This tendency finds its most potent expression in politicians. It is cynically said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. It can also be that the first impulse of an over-controlling person is politics. They want power but they justify it by claiming that personally they are not power-hungry but want it only as a means to fix the problem.

As if it was not evident during the IAC days, Kejriwal’s ambition and motivation became obvious when he and his cohort of hangers-on decided to start AAP. His basic mindset is not too different from the mindset of those whom he appears to be fighting against. The ones in power got there on the same promise to people — deliverance from the misery of daily existence — and here was AAP going to deliver the people from the control of a rapacious government. AAP will fight the monster by becoming a bigger monster. To make such a promise and be believed requires a lot of guts, and of course a gullible public that cannot see through even the most blatant of deceptions.

The public is gullible. There isn’t a nicer way to say it. The public has been electing venal politicians for decades and I don’t see any reason to believe that suddenly it has become smarter and is not going to be taken in by glib promises made by fast-talking charlatans. Certainly politicians do get voted out but the ones that get voted in are no different in any meaningful sense. It is a different bucketful but it is still drawn from the same cesspool as the one before.

Ambitious, opportunistic, manipulative, authoritarian, self-aggrandizing, controlling: these are descriptive of people you don’t want to associate with perhaps. Yet those are the characteristics of all successful politicians. But a good politician is more than that. A good politician is one who fundamentally understands what the public good is, knows what needs to be done to achieve it and is motivated to work for it. It is a matter of objectives, intelligence and diligence.

I don’t see Kejriwal as a good politician. He is clever and evidently very shrewd but not intelligent enough to understand the nature of the problem that he proclaims he will solve. Part of this inability arises from his background as a civil servant. Bureaucrats are trained to believe that controlling others is the key to solving problems. More rules, more regulations, more controls – these are the instinctive reactions of bureaucrats to any and all problems.

It was a bureaucratic mindset that created the notorious license-quota-permit-control raj, much beloved of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty led Congress. It created the monster of public corruption that devours the poor and keeps the economy shackled. Kejriwal does not understand the root cause of public corruption. To my mind, that’s the first strike against him.

The second strike against him is closely related to the first. Not being content with just fighting corruption, he expanded his horizons and set a socialist agenda. Every time socialism has been advanced as the solution for poverty, it has only deepened poverty. This generalization is without exception. Why has socialism failed? Because it denies people freedom, and without freedom people are unable to produce what is needed to live decent, productive lives. Socialism imposes the will of a small set of people on the rest. Socialism is a recipe for disaster.

India had the double misfortune of first being entrapped by British colonialism and then escaping it only to fall into the deadly embrace of Nehruvian socialism. India went from British Raj 1.0 to British Raj 2.0. The transition was easy since the state machinery of extractive and exploitative policies was created by the British and readily adopted by Nehru and his descendants. The rulers of post-independence India continued the dysfunctional rule of India. It was not as if they were unhappy with the way things were; their major concern was that they themselves wanted to rule instead of the British.

The same type of transition is what India has in store if, god forbid, Kejriwal and AAP are able to come to power. The transition will be this time from Nehruvian Socialism 1.0 (aka British Raj 2.0) to Nehruvian Socialism 2.0 under the new AAP dispensation. The entire machinery is in place, waiting for new operators. Once again, it is not as if Kejriwal is unhappy about the way things are done – total bureaucratic control of the people – but rather he would like to be the one in control.

Truth be told, there is no danger that AAP will get to govern India at the center, even as a coalition partner. The danger is that it can spoil India’s chances of moving out of Nehruvian socialism. AAP has nuisance value and the Maino-led UPA/Congress is well aware of that. It will now attempt to use AAP to scuttle India’s chances of getting out of poverty. They know that a segment of the middle-class urban voters are seduced by idiotic notions of a “clean government by sincere people.” This segment will not vote for the UPA/Congress but to prevent it from voting for a Modi-led BJP, it would promote Kejriwal.

Here’s how that strategy would work. The UPA/Congress has bought and paid for a significant chunk of the mainstream media journalists. These will be instructed to talk up Kejriwal and provide him wall to wall media coverage. This will deflect attention from the prince and his little band of merry men. Voters have a short attention span and even shorter memories. Since the Modi versus Gandhi fight has already been called in favor of Modi, the new fighter the Congress will push into the ring against Modi will be Kejriwal. The Congress is a past master of the game and will fund the AAP to make sure that the BJP loses even if the Congress does not win.

Kejriwal is the willing useful idiot that the Congress/UPA was looking for and the Delhi voters have obliged. It is all karma, neh?

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101702013-12-09T13:00:38Z2013-12-09T13:00:38ZContinue reading →]]> “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man and Prison Writings

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101622013-12-06T23:40:23Z2013-12-06T23:40:23ZContinue reading →]]>Nelson Mandela’s death is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the fact that apartheid is no longer a state policy in South Africa. And also to recognize that the accounts of the death of apartheid are quite exaggerated.

What exactly is apartheid? The Merriam-Webster defines it as “a former social system in South Africa in which black people and people from other racial groups did not have the same political and economic rights as white people and were forced to live separately from white people.” It is the systematic and legally enforced segregation of people.
Let’s understand that it is discrimination for or against a person based a person’s membership in a particular group. It is a means of negating a person’s intrinsic worth and judging a person merely based on some characteristics that one is born with such as race or the color of his skin. Let’s also remember that apartheid is based on laws, that it is legal. Whether or not it is moral, it is always legal. The laws of the state make apartheid a reality.

South Africa got rid of the naked apartheid it had as state policy but that is only one of the more egregious examples. There are countries in the world today where they still have it in a disguised form. There are parts of the world where all people are not treated equally. In these parts of the world, like in places with apartheid, people are categorized or segregated into groups and rules apply differentially to them.

India is well acquainted with a version of apartheid. I am referring to the caste system. A caste system is not intrinsically bad. A caste is a kinship group: people are born into it and identify with their kinship group. That identification is voluntary and does not imply oppression and therefore it is not objectionable. What is objectionable is when an individual is discriminated against merely for belonging to that group. And the worst offence is when an individual is discriminated against by the state for belonging to a group.

Let me underline that: it is not an individual discriminating against another individual but rather the state discriminating between groups and judging individuals as worthy or unworthy based on their group affiliation. This kind of discrimination is not consistent with an enlightened, progressive, modern society. Any society that legally discriminates against persons based on group membership is retarded and backward.

India is a shining example of a country in which the state affirmatively discriminates against people based on their kinship group. In India, the laws do not apply equally to all people regardless of their group affiliation. Depending on the religion of the person or some other irrelevant characteristic, the state determines what the person is worthy of.

This subtle form of apartheid is very much alive and thriving in India. People don’t recognize it as such because they are so immersed in it. It is too encompassing to be of note, just like water is to fish. In India, as a matter of policy all people are equal but some are “more equal” than others, to borrow from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

India will only become free from this disguised apartheid when people gain a sense of fairness and revolt against the state’s legal discrimination. It may not be that apparent but in reality this state sanctioned disguised apartheid is fueling the cold civil war that is slowly destroying India.

Is there a way out? Yes. Indians have to rise up against the Government and prevent it from imposing this apartheid. People must demand that all individuals must be equal before the law and that there cannot be different laws for different people. Disguised apartheid is as morally repugnant as naked apartheid.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101582013-12-06T23:35:44Z2013-12-06T23:35:44ZContinue reading →]]>A society that has lost its sense of proportion and a sense of justice is doomed. This should make us weep out of frustration and compassion for the unfortunates who are caught in the whirlpool of injustice. It makes me sick to my stomach to even write about this.
If there is one story that clearly illustrates what is fundamentally wrong with India is has to be the one reported recently.

This is the story of a poor postman Umakant Mishra. He was working at Harjinder Nagar Post office in Kanpur in the 1980s. On July 13, 1984 a case of pocketing a money order for Rs 57.60 registered against him and he was suspended from the job.

He not only lost his livelihood, but also his self respect and honor. With no money and support, he had to attend almost 350 court hearings in the last 29 years.

Think about what all this entails. It took nearly thirty years and 350 hearings for the courts to exonerate the man falsely accused of a minor theft. He was punished so severely that it is hard to contemplate how he can be reasonably compensated. At the same time, public corruption amounting to lakhs of crores of rupees are routinely reported in the popular press and the guilty continue to be in positions of immense power and influence.

The case of the poor postman reminds me of another case I had read about over nine years ago. This is what I wrote in a blog post, India’s Real Criminals, back in September 2004:

July 6th, 1988 will be long remembered as that infamous day when Daya Nand of Narnaul attempted to subvert the fundamental functioning of our way of life. On that day, forever to be recalled as 6/7/88, a crime was committed that engaged the attention of a trial court, then moved to the High Court, and finally ended up in the Supreme Court of India where the Hon’ble Justices heard the evidence, debated the issue with extreme gravity, spent days on end balancing the interests of the society and the rights of the accused, pondered long and hard and eventually delivered a verdict that forever assured the triumph of good over evil, of order over chaos, of right over wrong, of satya over asatya, of light over darkness, of immortality over death, of knowledge over ignorance…

For the record, the bench of the Supreme Court of the Republic of India which passed this momentous judgement comprised of Justices Hegde, Sinha and Mathur. The punishment: Six months in prison and Rs 1000 fine. The crime as report by PTI: Daya Nand of Narnaul had diluted 20 litres of milk with water. He was caught by the Deputy Chief Medical Officer who took 750 ml of the sample and sent it to Public Analyst. “The Analyst in his detailed report found the sample to be deficient in milk solid to the extent of five percent of the prescribed minimum standard and also to be deficient in solid fat as required by law.”

The trial court sentenced Daya Nand leniently considering that he had three small children to support and had no previous criminal record. The High Court overturned that decision but finally it reached the Supreme Court which upheld the trial court’s decision.

Moral of the story: Commit a petty crime and be prepared to be hounded by the implacable power of the entire state machinery; commit a crime that is almost impossible to comprehend in its enormity, and be hailed as a visionary leader with impeccable honesty and integrity.

A society in which the innocent are punished by the state and the supremely guilty are not only not punished but actually rewarded with political power has clearly lost its moorings and is morally and ethically adrift. There is something wrong when this happens and what is worse that people are apparently unmoved by such injustice. Where is the society’s sense of fairness, of justice? Where is the outrage?

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101492013-12-05T23:10:06Z2013-12-05T22:38:42ZContinue reading →]]> I had posted this piece to Niti Central exactly a month ago. Now it is time to put it here. Still reads ok, I think.The Modi Juggernaut is on the MovePreviously published on Niti Central on Nov 5th.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word juggernaut as “something (such as a force, campaign, or movement) that is extremely large and powerful and cannot be stopped.” The word’s origin lies in the Sanskrit word “Jagannath” which means “lord of the world”, another name for Krishna, one of the many avatars of Vishnu. Given its etymology and its English meaning, it is doubly satisfying to use it in the context of Shri Narendra Modi and write, “The Modi juggernaut is on the move.”

It is becoming quite apparent that Modi is becoming an unstoppable force in the Indian political landscape. The crowds at his rallies are jaw-dropping spectacles. The word “rally” used as a verb — “to come together again in order to continue fighting after a defeat or dispersion” — is apt. The Modi juggernaut is rallying Indians and leading them to victory over forces that have been historically inimical to India’s growth and prosperity.

But there’s a danger. Something akin to Newton’s third law of mechanics — every action produces an equal and opposite reaction — applies in the world of political struggles. As Modi grows from strength to strength, those who have declared themselves his sworn enemies are understandably reacting with increasing force and severity. They are fighting for survival and in their desperation will stop at nothing to defeat Modi.

For over a decade they struggled in vain to demonize him. They had hoped that their intense, unrelenting calumny would result in the people rejecting him. As is evident, they failed in that. They tried to demonize him but the people (and the courts) rejected those lies. However, Modi’s enemies have been able to do something worse: they raised an unholy army of disaffected people and motivated them to neutralize (for want of a better word) Modi. If they cannot defeat him at the polls, they want to make sure that he does not get to the polls. If this means that hundreds of innocents will be killed through bombs and the resulting panicked stampedes at rallies, they could not care less.

The bombs at the Patna rally that killed six innocents and injured scores provide a foretaste of what is to come. It’s an old pattern. In today’s parlance, they were a beta test, a dry run. Based on the results of the test, they will improve their technique. It would be foolish to expect that the war against Modi and his supporters will be concluded any time soon. It is almost a certainty that the next time, they will use high-intensity explosives to kill directly and indirectly through the resulting stampede.

Modi’s enemies and their terrorist assistants have learned that low-intensity bombs don’t produce the effect they wanted. A more important lesson they learned is the main stream media would help them in their destructive task by deflecting attention from the crimes and deliberate security lapses, and instead focus on trivial issues. Instead of expressing outrage and calling for accountability and responsibility from those ultimately responsible for public security, the paid media will provide cover for terrorists and their pay masters.

I think it is fair to assume that those whose job it is to provide security to public figures and make arrangements for safety of people in massive public gathering know how to do their jobs. But those people do what they are instructed to do by their superiors, which happen to be the state political leaders in the case of state police forces. The security chain is only as strong as the weakest link in it. I get the sense that the weakest link in Modi’s case is the political will to ensure his security and public safety.

The way out of this is that those who are ultimately responsible for security — the political leaders — should be read the riot act. They must be told by the people in unambiguous terms that they will be held responsible for any terrorist incident at any political rally and that they will pay a terrible price if bad things were to happen. In other words, the leaders will have to be given the incentive to do whatever is humanly possible to ensure nothing bad happens.

If Shri Nitish Kumar, the CM of Bihar, had been given this kind of assurance that he would be held accountable for any security breach at Modi’s public rally in Patna, one can be reasonably sure that he would not have taken the lackadaisical attitude he took. Now there is only one thing that the people can do and that is to send him a message by not voting for him the next time.

One almost feels sorry for the bind that Modi’s self-identified enemies find themselves in. They are caught between a rock and a very hard place. They cannot outrun the juggernaut but they are directly in its path and will be crushed. The harder they try to hurt Modi, the more they reveal their true nature and that drives more people to Modi’s side. They plant bombs and kill innocents to disrupt Modi’s rally but it has the opposite of strengthening him. They are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

I have a bit of unsolicited advice for them: accept the inevitable and cut your losses. Stop terrorising the crowds at Modi’s public events. Stop trying to assassinate him. If you persist in this nastiness, you will not only harm innocents but you will also ensure that people will not ever forgive you for the death and destruction that your attempts at stopping Modi would result in. Go in peace and leave India to those who care for her.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101402015-02-16T05:50:11Z2013-12-05T18:14:07ZContinue reading →]]>This is the continuation of the previous piece on the government creating and profiting from conflict. This piece was originally published at Niti Central on Dec 3rd. Here it is, for the record.

On Constitutions and the Generality Principle

In a previous piece (“Profiting from Conflict – the Monkey and the Cats”), I had used the fable of the monkey and the cats to model simple situations in which a third party gains from the conflict between two parties. A natural extension of the model showed that the third party could indeed artificially provoke, generate and maintain hostilities between the two parties out of self-interest. Even if the cats don’t really intend to, the monkey ensures that they do end up fighting.

All that is rather obvious but needed to be stated so as to make explicit a basic building block of the argument that is to follow and which relates to conflict in the political sphere. Another building block relates to the structure of the polity, which in the case of India is broadly democratic. The basic idea behind a democracy is that the people have a voice in choosing their political leaders and therefore indirectly they choose how they are governed and what public policies are adopted.

In the ideal conception of democracy, the citizens are well-informed about the choices they face and the elected members of the government are farsighted, benevolent, wise and selflessly motivated to seek that which is true, good and just. The reality, however, is not romantic at all and is quite bleak, especially in underdeveloped countries. In reality, the voters are largely ignorant and the politicians are motivated by self-interest and not public interest — even if they were aware of what public interest is, which is doubtful.

Deviations from the ideal are not limited to those alone. The greatest flaw in the scheme arises from the basic structure of rules that guide public policy, namely, the constitution, and the heterogeneous nature of the society. Homogenous societies are immune to easy divisions of the population into groups. But where there are major easily identifiable differences of religion, language, castes and regions, the society can be divided along multiple dimensions.

Differences are by themselves not harmful. Indeed diversity itself can be a major contributor to the vitality and resiliency of a people. But there has to be a shared conception of what is sacrosanct, what is worth aspiring for, what is the common good, and so on. Major disagreements or even just lack of a shared vision of the good society is definitely a major hurdle to prosperity.

Societies which have potential fracture lines can still avoid catastrophic breakdown provided the basic set of rules — the constitution — that constrain behaviour were such that it did not stress those divisions. The real danger arises when the constitution makes those fault lines explicit and laws are enacted in accordance with those rules which then discriminate for or against identifiable groups.

A word about constitutions is in order. The constitution of a state defines the broad framework within which laws are made by legislators presumably to further some interest of the state as recognised by them and authorized by the citizens either directly or indirectly. Constitutions don’t lay down the law so much as provide a yardstick to measure whether a law is within certain defined bounds. Therefore, constitutions belong to a different category than do laws. If laws are rules, then the constitutions define meta-rules — rules about rules.

It may be said that constitutions provide the direction and destination of the journey, while leaving the matter of how to get there to policies through enacted legislation. If a state is unable to meet the basic needs of its citizens, it is likely that the enacted set of laws is implicated at least in the proximate analysis. But in the ultimate analysis because it is the constitution that defines which legislated laws are permissible, bad public policies point to a bad constitution. Good constitutions are necessary for good policies but bad constitutions are sufficient for bad policies. Bad laws necessarily lead to bad outcomes.

One of the bad set of laws that have been enacted in India are those that discriminate among and between various groups in India. Especially pernicious are those that discriminate on the basis of religion and other group characteristics. They violate what is known as the generality principle.

Generality principle is well-recognized in a court of law. All citizens are treated as equals and everyone is guaranteed equal treatment before the law. But in politics, the generality principle is not applied. It leads to what the late James Buchanan, Nobel laureate economist and public-choice theorist, called the “politics by interest.”

“Politics by principle” is that which modern politics is not. What we observe is “politics by interest,” whether in the form of explicitly discriminatory treatment (rewarding or punishing) of particular groupings of citizens or some elitist-dirigiste classification of citizens into the deserving and nondeserving on the basis of presumed superior wisdom about what is really “good” for us all. The proper principle for politics is that of generalisation or generality. This standard is met when political actions apply to all persons independent of membership in a dominant coalition or an effective interest group. The generality principle is violated to the extent that political action is overtly discriminatory in the sense that the effects, positive or negative, depend on personalised identification.

Personalized identification has become something of a norm in India. Handouts are made on the basis of which religion a person professes, or caste that the person belongs to. This leads to political rent-seeking, the attempt by groups to seek differential benefits for themselves at the expense of other groups. This is not the worst of it, though. The worst part is that it fractures the polity and pits groups against each other. Politics thus becomes a zero-sum (or even a negative-sum) game in which certain groups benefit at the expense of others. What is lost in the ensuing conflict is the shared vision for the nation and a loss of communitarian values that are critical for social cohesiveness and peace. Its logical conclusion is a war of each against all or what I call a “cold civil war.”

The way out is simple to state but not easy to implement. The constitution has to prohibit discrimination and extend the generality principle to the political sphere. This kind of constitutional prohibition is not unknown. For instance, the first amendment to the US Constitution (ratified in 1791, a good 222 years ago) reads,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Thus legislators in the US cannot pass laws that discriminate among people of different religions since doing so would be tantamount to respecting the establishment of some religions and prohibiting others. Or consider The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, the Constitution of Germany. Article 3 [Equality before the Law] reads (in part):

(1) All persons shall be equal before the law.

. . .

(3) No person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions.

These embody the generality principle. Scholars have long recognized its central role in the creation of a free society, such as Friedrich A Hayek in his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty. The point here is not what a government should do politically but rather that whatever it does, it should do generally and not discriminatorily. Held to that standard, politics would not be as bad as it is. Discrimination in the political sphere damages the social fabric and ultimately destroys the sense of shared purpose that is essential for any progress.

The problem as I had stated it in the previous piece was this: how do we ensure that the government does not act to provoke and maintain a state of cold civil war among various groups in the country? I am forced to the conclusion that it can only happen if the constitution of the country prohibits discriminatory laws. To bring that about, nothing short of a radical rethinking of what India stands for is required. The question is: can India reinvent itself?

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101342015-02-15T21:17:18Z2013-12-03T03:41:03ZContinue reading →]]>This question has bothered me for a long time: Why are there riots and other forms of social unrest in India? Are Indians intrinsically unsocial or is there a structural reason for this? What is it in its political makeup that there is inter-group conflict? I explored that question in a piece I wrote for Niti Central a few days ago. I am posting it here, for the record.Profiting from Conflict — The Monkey and the Cats{Previously published in NitiCentral on 26th Nov.}

As a child, I had read that tale from the Panchatantra about two cats fighting over the division of a piece of bread and the monkey who mediated in that conflict. In the usual telling of the story, the monkey ends up eating the entire piece of bread and the cats get nothing. I had learned the obvious moral of the story then as a child but it took me some years before I could appreciate the full implications of that tale.

The monkey’s opportunistic behaviour and the stupidity of the cats are plainly obvious. In the story, the cats are already in a quarrel and the monkey cleverly uses the opportunity to profit. If there had been no quarrel, the monkey would not have got all of the bread leaving nothing for the cats.

Fables are models. They essentially model human behaviour and explicate the interactions between humans concisely. Economists too do it with models (as the witticism goes). You could say that economic models are also fables and quite frequently their models are also fables with moral implications. Morality and ethics is a central concern of economics.

Adam Smith, the father of what is called classical economics, is known for his most influential book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations which was published in 1776. However, the book that Smith considered superior to it was his first book The Theory of Moral Sentiments published in 1759, which explored the moral and ethical foundations of societies. Economics can be considered to be a specialised branch of moral philosophy. Strictly speaking, economics is the study of human behaviour. The vocabulary of modern economists often reveals that fact: moral hazard, adverse selection, etc.

Now let’s get back to the cats and the monkey. The cats were fighting perhaps because one or both were greedy and wanted more than the fair share. Or perhaps they were both fair minded but could not agree on what a fair division was. In any case, the monkey enters the picture to arbitrate and settles the dispute to its advantage. From its point of view, cat conflicts are profitable. But what if the cats never had a dispute or had settled it themselves when it arose?

That is the lesson I learned later: that an unscrupulous monkey would have an incentive to provoke the conflict in the first place so that it could be called in to arbitrate. It could persuade each of the cats that the other cat was greedy and wanted to take more than it deserved. Having poisoned their minds, the monkey’s role then becomes indispensible. It would claim that without it, there will be no justice, peace or fairness in cat society. In short, it would settle down in the role of the government, dispensing justice, overseeing the just distribution of bread and maintaining the peace.

Now let’s extend this monkey-cats model. What if the cats grow wise and figure out that fighting is not a good thing. Suppose they come up with a rule that ensures fairness in the distribution of bread. One such rule is the “you cut, I choose” rule. The cat which divides the bread now will cut it so that it is happy to have either of the pieces – and hence has the incentive to be as fair as it can. That leads to no conflict, and no monkey business. The moral of this story is that it is better to settle the disputes bilaterally and not invite a third party to arbitrate if that third party has (or develops) an interest in prolonging the conflict.

Let’s consider two countries, A and B, engaged in a costly conflict over some issue. Both buy weapons from country C which is hugely profitable. If hostilities between A and B were to cease, it would be a loss for C. Therefore, C has an interest in the continuation of the conflict. It has an incentive to intervene and help prop up either of the countries which is in imminent danger of defeat. In general, C will help the weaker of the countries so that the conflict does not end.

Wars are generally very costly for most people but are always very profitable for some. It is also not too difficult to start a conflict. Envy, greed and covetousness lie just beneath the surface and can be summoned almost at will. Arms manufacturers and arms dealers have the greatest incentive for provoking, fuelling and maintaining conflict. Follow the money if you want to know why some parts of the world suffer chronic conflict.

Conflicts need not be hot – in the sense of on-going regular battles fought with planes, tanks, guns and bombs. Even a “cold war” is quite profitable: trillions of dollars were spent in the immense build-up of arms and ammunitions in the global superpower conflict. The military-industrial complex that US President Eisenhower had warned his compatriots is a reality. The tactic employed was as simple as it was effective: keep the citizens in a state of fear and suspicion.

The sad thing is that the counterpart of conflict – hot or cold – among countries is also seen within countries, especially in those which are cursed with particularly poor governance. Civil wars are quite common. Hot civil wars are naturally bad but there are what one might call “cold civil wars.” A cold civil war is a low level chronic conflict that occasionally leads to localised hot conflict in which a few hundred people die routinely.

For a cold civil war, you need a combination of factors. First, you need to have two or more identifiable groups within the country. Then you convince at least one of the groups that its interests, if not its very existence, is threatened by the others. Finally, you position yourself as the protector of the threatened group. In short, sell them a problem and then sell them a solution.

This kind of cold civil war is immensely costly to the country. But it is very profitable for those who depend on the continuation of the conflict. Mostly imaginary fears are magnified and the resulting paranoia exploited.

You may be able to recognise this in the context of India. During the waning period of the British Raj, the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent were mobilised by their leaders to suspect non-Muslims and that led to the creation of Pakistan. The two countries and the inter-country wars that followed were profitable for arms manufacturing countries. (I have modelled the India/Pakistan conflict on a little party game called a “dollar auction.”)

Pakistan and India are different in two very salient aspects. First in terms of their respective minorities. And second, in the style of governance. Pakistan started with a minority non-Muslim population but over time has been able to nearly eliminate them. The few that remain are essentially cowed down and don’t really matter. Pakistan’s governance structure is nominally democratic (at least at times) but it is de facto a military state. They have elections but these don’t require the politicians to promote any group paranoia within the country to win elections. All they have to do is to point to non-Muslim India and repeat the same old message that India wants to destroy Pakistan.

India, in sharp contrast, has a sizeable Muslim population. And India is a real democracy (whatever its merits) compared to Pakistan. India’s Muslim population is sizable enough to make a difference in the electoral fortunes of any political party that gets that vote. So to get that vote, the same formula used during the British raj is employed: convince the Muslims that they have problems; that the non-Muslims are at the root of their problems; that they need protection and which protection can only come from this political party.

This leads to what I consider to be a perpetual “cold civil war” in India. The Muslims are frightened into believing that they are in existential danger, just like their ancestors were and some of whom left India for the safe haven of Pakistan. Political parties that profit from this are the monkey that steals the bread.

To reiterate, the moral of the fable is this: don’t have a stupid fight in which you invite a self-serving third party to intervene. Nehru, if he had read that fable, evidently did not understand it. But his inheritors have been very profitably playing the role of the monkey. Monkeys profit and impoverish cats but can only do so because the cats are stupid.

How does one stop monkeys from stealing bread is a matter that I shall take up in the next part of this essay.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101252013-12-02T02:06:22Z2013-12-02T02:03:55ZContinue reading →]]>A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the road near the Parliament building in N Delhi. Nothing was moving. Suddenly a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, “What’s going on?”

“Terrorists have kidnapped the politicians. They’re asking for a Rs 1,000 crores ransom. Otherwise, they’re going to douse them all in petrol and set them on fire. We’re going from car to car collecting donations . . .”

“How much is everyone giving, on average?” the driver asks. The man replies, “Roughly two liters.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101192014-10-11T14:48:58Z2013-11-26T17:45:08ZContinue reading →]]>The wiki entry says, “The Constitution of India was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into effect on 26 January 1950, proclaiming India to be a sovereign, democratic republic. It contained the founding principles of the law of the land which would govern India after its independence from British rule. On the day the constitution came into effect, India ceased to be a dominion of the British Crown. The Indian constitution is the world’s longest constitution. At the time of commencement, the constitution had 395 articles in 22 parts and 8 schedules. It consists of almost 80,000 words and took 2 years 11 months and 18 days to build.”

I have not be able to read the Indian constitution. If you have not read it also, please RT. I want to do an informal survey. 'ktxbi

I have tried unsuccessfully to read the constitution. I could not understand it. Over the years I have asked thousands of educated Indians if they have read the Indian constitution and not one has claimed to have read it fully. A few have read parts of it, some only the preamble, and most have no idea what it is about except for that they know that it is the longest constitution in the world.
The Indian constitution is like the holy books of the monotheists. They all hold it in high regard but only a few have read. If you ask them, they will say, “Yes of course, I have read it.” Probe deeper, “You mean you have read it cover to cover?” and they will admit, “Well, I have read parts of it.” That does not count as having read it.

“Have you read Tolstoy’s War and Peace?”
“Yes.”
“Start to finish?”
“No, the first couple of pages.”

The point here is to show that the constitution is unread and that’s primarily because it is unreadable. Why does it have to be readable? Because it is supposed to lay down the basic rules of the state. Why? Because it has those basic rules have to be properly understood by the people. Why? Because if you don’t understand them, you cannot agree with them, and which agreement is important as a citizen.

]]>6Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101132013-11-24T19:58:33Z2013-11-24T19:58:33ZContinue reading →]]>This is a follow-on piece in response to some of the comments to my piece (read it here) on the Indian Mars probe that India launched a few weeks ago. Here it is, for the record.Mars Mission Revisited{Previously published on Niti Central on Nov 19th.}

My column of November 10 criticising the Indian mission to Mars met with some opposition which was not surprising. The push-back was predictable and I had anticipated the reasons that would be advanced and addressed them in the piece itself.

My argument against the mission – and other such ventures – was predicated on the simple notion that everything we do has an opportunity cost. Therefore it is simply not sufficient to point to only the benefits of a specific action to justify undertaking it; one has to compare those benefits with the benefits of alternate actions which would be precluded by the action.

That the mission has obvious benefits – building capacity, advancing knowledge, etc – is not in dispute. What needs examination is whether it is the best way to advance those objectives. Technological capacity, even in very narrowly defined fields, can be built through a variety of tasks, not just through one thing. Choosing among them is part of a sensible approach to maximising benefits.

Thus if the objective is to build launch capacity, missions to Mars cannot be the only way of doing it. Launch commercial satellites. Ferry cargo to the international space station. There are alternative ways.

One comment pointed out that “a tremendous push for advanced solar technology can come from a rover like object which would exclusively rely on solar panels for its activities under very rough conditions.” That bit illustrates the point I make about alternative means of building capacity. Sure, you can send a mission to Mars and figure out how to build robust solar technology. But why? It is not as if rough conditions cannot be duplicated on Earth.

Suppose you wanted to figure out the effects of 9,000 metre altitude on humans. Would you recommend an expedition to climb Mt Everest which would involve ferrying people and equipment there, or would you recommend duplicating the atmospheric conditions in a lab to do the study?

One comment said that he has not seen a more ignorant article. “The author clearly has no idea how scientific advances happen. From diapers to clean rooms used in making medicines all are by products of space research. 450 crore rupees is less than the cost of opening ceremony of the Delhi commonwealth games.” It is too common to conflate the scientific with the technological but I shall not address it here. I note the use of what can be called the “collateral” argument for doing something.

You can never do only one thing. It is sometimes termed as the First Law of Ecology. Meaning regardless of your primary or your only objective, anything you do will have consequences that you don’t intend or anticipate doing. Collateral damage is the term used when non-combatants are killed in battles.

But justifying something – even beneficial actions – on the collateral fallouts is inefficient and insufficient. Only if the benefits of doing something do not justify the costs, only then does one have to resort to adding up the supposed collateral benefits. It is weak position to have to defend.

Justifying the mission based on cost comparisons with something entirely different is hard to comprehend. Using the cost of the Common Wealth Games in New Delhi to justify the Mars mission is a surreal non sequitur.

Then there’s the soft-power argument made in one comment. “Mars mission is about having soft power . . . It is about giving a message we are equal to the developed countries in terms of research.” But how about making real progress in the lives of people instead of projecting soft power, whatever that is.

One commenter was quite blunt. “A useless cynical, intellectually challenged and unoriginal article. In line with patronizing Western attitude of how India should act. Such lack of self-confidence and misplaced priority will continue to delay maturity of Indian self-perception.” It’s the old “agent of the West” tactic to discredit the argument.

I am not interested in who advances the argument. I do not care about the provenance – if it makes sense, I would accept it. I would not immediately start throwing rocks in our harbor just because an enemy holds that throwing rocks in the harbor is a bad idea.

All sorts of arguments have been advanced by the proponents of the mission but nothing that I have not addressed in the column. However, I did not make the argument that is based on a general principle. It is this: if you are in favor of doing something, do it yourself. That is, vote with your pocket. If you want to spend on missions to Mars, put your money where your mouth is.

Why not let the government use tax revenues to do it? Because taxes should only fund those activities that are not discretionary – the provision of public goods and such other things that the market is even theoretically incapable of providing without public support.

If the society feels that extra-planetary missions are important, it can easily be arranged that a fund is created into which people can voluntarily contribute. This involves no coercion and is completely consistent with the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they see fit. For the important bits that must be done but will not be done by the market, there’s the government; for everything else, there’s MasterCard for you.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=101062013-11-24T04:00:52Z2013-11-24T03:49:54ZContinue reading →]]>I have never made it is a secret that I find Bollywood unbearable. But I have to confess that I have watched the 1975 blockbuster Sholay a dozen times at least. Why? Because one particular sequence in it cracked me up something wicked. It is a traditional joke — someone ostensibly speaking in favor of a person but actually doing everything possible to undermine that person’s case. As a rhetorical device, it is deliciously persuasive because the humor hammers home the underlying message more effectively than straightforward speech.
In that particular scene in the movie, Amitabh Bachchan’s character is pleading his friend’s case to the aunt of a girl that his friend is keen on. He slyly reveals that his friend is actually a worthless layabout and general debauch. The aunt is understandably disgusted and in the end she says that the last thing she would want is to throw her niece into the clutches of such a monster. End scene.

What brought to mind that sequence is that there’s a new parody of it on YouTube. In this version, the Bachchan character is canvassing the old lady to vote for the Congress/UPA government. Just give the government one more chance, he pleads. Let me not spoil it for you. Just watch it.

(Sorry to those who don’t follow Hindi. Perhaps someone will subtitle it in English soon.)

The old lady’s voice is clearly not that of the original actor’s but the man’s voice is unmistakably that of Amitabh Bachchan. I wonder how the makers of the parody got him to do it. Be that as it may, I am thrilled about it. The form of the message is funny but the content is devastatingly accurate. People who support the Congress/UPA government despite their terrible deeds are purposefully blind to the obvious. What they gain from this blindness will have to wait for another day but for now, just enjoy the little skit, which unfortunately for us, is not a parody. You cannot parody a government that is a parody itself.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100852013-11-24T20:00:51Z2013-11-11T22:16:28ZContinue reading →]]>Countries, as much as individuals, have to allocate limited resources rationally. Even those tasks that have net benefits have to be considered in relation to the net benefits of other tasks that could instead have been done — the simple idea of opportunity costs explored in the previous post, “The Importance of Prioritizing and Sequenceing.” In the following I argue why India’s mission to Mars is a waste of valuable resources.The unbearable silliness of mission to Mars{Published on Niti Central on Nov 10th.}

This thing about opportunity costs, prioritising and sequencing applies at the level of the collective as much as at the level of the individual. Society too has limited resources which have alternative uses. Based on its priorities, the government chooses how public resources are to be used. If it chooses correctly over an extended period, the outcome is a prosperous society, and vice versa. These are public policy choices and they powerfully determine the prosperity (or lack thereof) of the society, state or nation.

Considered in isolation, the decision to send a probe to Mars can be justified on the grounds that it will add to our knowledge about it. That’s a benefit. And of course there’s a cost. Whether the cost is less than what it would have cost another country or not is irrelevant. The salient question relates to the opportunity cost of the Mars mission because increasing our knowledge about Mars is not the only thing that needs to be done. Was it the most important thing India could have done at this time expending the same resources? I argue that it was not and that it was a bad decision.

Mars is not relevant to India. Whatever scientific discoveries the Indian probe makes will be quite irrelevant to the people of India — or any other people, for that matter. There can be no conceivable benefit to knowing its geology or atmospheric composition or whatever. True this knowledge will be of some use to someone in the future but right now aside from scientific curiosity, there’s little use of it here and now.

But isn’t research a good thing? Of course it is. However finding out things about Mars (or any other extraterrestrial body) is not basic research. Basic research is what advances scientific knowledge which in time helps people in figuring out the technology that have beneficial applications. The question isn’t whether India should do basic research or not; the question what kind of basic research. There are lots of areas where research and development is sorely required and missing. That should be the priority.

One can easily list dozens of areas where resources for research and development could be spent. Here’s one: solar power. India needs to do it because research will lead to technology that will be of use here and now, and in the future. Any resources spent in solar power research will have massive return on investments. The technology it develops will not only directly benefit it (lower energy bills) but also build capacity for research. India is favorably located with immense solar energy potential and that should be top priority for R&D for India. The reasons for investment in solar power research are too many to go into here but the primary reason is that it will directly lead to production and productivity growth — which is sorely needed if India is to stop being poor.

The point here is that there is an endless list of things which require publicly-funded research. Developing countries should focus on those fields that are likely to benefit them most urgently and in fields where other countries are not motivated to invest in. Poor countries should leave it to rich countries to do things like sending missions to Mars. They have a comparative advantage there and it is pointless competing with them. The resources they spend will be dictated by their priorities but the benefits — the knowledge about other planets — anyway will be part of the shared scientific knowledge of humanity.

One argument that is sometimes made has to do with national pride. India is the fourth country to send a probe to Mars, or some such thing. That goes into the “pride” column but what about that item in the “shame” column which says that India ranks 140-something in a list of nations and basic literacy? Now it can be argued that with the (relatively) small amounts that are spent in a Mars mission, you could not make a real dent in literacy. But that is incorrect.

India’s literacy problem needs to be solved urgently. A literate population is an absolute minimum if India is to grow economically and socially. The old methods of government schools have failed and are anyway outdated in a world of highly advanced information and communications technologies. Just spending a few tens of millions of dollars on that problem will yield enormous benefits. Gather a stellar group of researchers and practitioners who have the knowledge of that field and let them figure out a solution. That’s a research area for you.

Another area of research could be to figure out a better legal system. Courts are backlogged and I am certain that there are laws on the books that are idiotic, outdated and need to be weeded out. How about spending some public resources on them because there are public benefits.

How about doing a bit of research to figure out how best to design public toilets? It may not be the most exciting thing to read about in the newspapers — certainly not as sexy as sending probes to Mars — but it will have enormous public health benefits. The reason this is not on the radar of the policy makers is simply that they themselves have private toilets and cannot empathise with the plight of people who don’t have any toilets.

Here’s another research area: figure out what’s wrong with the Indian constitution and how to get it fixed so that it is sensible. As I see it, I think all the major ills that afflict India flow from a flawed constitution. One of the biggest flaws in it is that it is unreadable and — to a first approximation — nobody has read it. Over the last several years, I have asked at least 10,000 reasonably educated people and not one person has admitted to having read the constitution of India.

Or how about the mother of all research topics: why is India so desperately poor? If we could definitely know the causes of India’s continued failure to grow rapidly, we would be able to do something that will benefit the poorest of the poor. Right now there are a bunch of untutored ignoramuses determining public policy, people who would not know the first thing about what causes poverty or prosperity. How about hiring some of the best brains in the business from around the world and giving them the job of dispassionately figuring out what needs to be done?

All those and many other important topics need urgent attention in terms of public spending. If the government is not going to take the lead in funding research in these areas, who will? The private sector does not have the capacity nor the incentive to do so. It is a known fact that public funding is required in any field that has large positive benefits (positive externalities) for the public at large.

India has limited public resources and allocating them sensibly is necessary. For that India needs a well thought-out priority list. Choices have to be made because India cannot afford the opportunity cost of making bad choices. One day, if and when India becomes a middle-income country, maybe then India could indulge in the luxury of spending on irrelevant data gathering. But sending probes to the Moon or Mars is way down on the list right now and this kind of silliness should be called out strenuously and loudly.

]]>22Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100872013-11-12T06:03:34Z2013-11-11T22:10:57ZContinue reading →]]>Our successes and failures are a consequence of the choices we make, individually and collectively. Consistently good choices made over extended periods of time lead to success, barring any unfortunate and unanticipated circumstances. I explored that idea in a recent column at Niti Central. Here it is, for the record.Our choices determine our destiny{Published at Niti Central on Nov 9th.}

The prescription for individual success is simple to state, although like everything else of that ilk, it is not at all easy to follow. By individual success I don’t mean becoming incredibly rich and powerful or becoming the master of the universe but the rather mundane business of becoming what one is potentially capable of. That is, being the best one can be given one’s natural endowments and the external environment that the individual inhabits. Both the endowment (the mental and physical characteristics the individual is born with) and the environment (the place and time of the individual’s birth) are outside the individual’s choosing. They are a given; exogenous or externally determined; luck of the draw in the random draw of life.

Thus individual success is constrained by circumstances outside the individual’s control. However, given those constraints, the prescription to reach the potential is this: prioritize your goals and sequence your actions accordingly. Obviously that is not the most enlightening piece of advice you are likely to get but it is surprisingly accurate. Do the important bits first and do the less important bits only after you have taken care of the more important bits.

Prioritizing is important because we have limited resources, all of which have alternative uses. The most limiting of resources is time. If we had unlimited time, we would not have to choose between things that need to get done: we would eventually do them all. But even then we would have to sequence things since we cannot simultaneously do them all. When you do task A, you get the benefits of getting it done but you also forego the benefits of other tasks you could have done had you not done A. You forego the opportunity of the benefits of an alternative task B when you do A. That is what they call “opportunity cost” in economics lingo.

The important point here is that everything we do has an opportunity cost. Presumably here we are considering only those tasks that have positive net benefits; that is the benefits of doing them exceed their costs. It would be pointless to do things when the benefits don’t justify their costs. Now, one can always point to the net benefits of a task and argue that it is worth doing. But that argument fails because the question is not whether there are net benefits to doing something but whether that net benefit exceeds the net benefit of doing something else instead.

As individuals we are faced with choices every day and how we decide determines our life. Essayist Annie Dillard observed, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Our successes and failures are to a very large degree a consequence of the choices we make from moment to moment. Chance does play a part but is probably unbiased in that it equally aids success and failure.

At this very moment, I chose to write this instead of cleaning house or going out for a walk or reading or surfing the web or hanging out with a friend or a hundred other things I could be doing instead. I have consciously chosen to write about the Indian mission to Mars and I hope that I have chosen wisely.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100752013-11-12T01:44:59Z2013-11-10T08:16:43ZContinue reading →]]>Carl Sagan was born on this day in 1934. Thanks for Cosmos and the many books I loved passionately — The Demon-Haunted World and Pale Blue Dot. Here’s a tribute to you that I like from the ever-entertaining SciShow guy.

And those of you (listen up, Indians) who have not seen Carl Sagan’s Cosmos television series, there’s a bit from it that would be especially interesting. I am unable to link to the YouTube video of the 10th episode of Cosmos because it is not available in the US on YouTube for copyright reasons but you could find it on YouTube if you are outside the US. Here’s a partial transcript of what he says:

. . . because of that wonderful aspect of Hindu cosmology which first of all gives a time-scale for the Earth and the universe — a time-scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. We know that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, and the cosmos, or at least its present incarnation, is something like 10 or 20 billion years old. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma in this range, somewhere in the region of 8.4 billion years.

As far as I know [India's] is the only ancient religious tradition on the Earth which talks about the right time-scale. We want to get across the concept of the right time-scale, and to show that it is not unnatural.

In the West, people have the sense that what is natural is for the universe to be a few thousand years old, and that billions is indwelling, and no one can understand it. The Hindu concept is very clear. Here is a great world culture which has always talked about billions of years.

Finally, the many billion year time-scale of Hindu cosmology is not the entire history of the universe, but just the day and night of Brahma, and there is the idea of an infinite cycle of births and deaths and an infinite number of universes, each with its own gods.

And this is a very grand idea. Whether it is true or not, is not yet clear. But it makes the pulse quicken, and we thought it was a good way to approach the subject.

Billions and billions of happy birthday, Carl. BTW, he never actually said “billions and billions” on his show. He did say billions a few time, though. He had the sense of humor to title his biography Billions and Billions.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100642013-11-07T00:14:09Z2013-11-07T00:14:09ZContinue reading →]]>This piece, published on Niti Central, relates to the Congress’s attempt to prevent people from knowing how badly it is faring in the public’s opinion by banning the publication of opinion polls. Here it is.Finally some good news from India{Originally published here.}

The news out of India is usually grim. Which makes the occasional good news item all the more precious. The news that the Congress-led UPA government was attempting to ban public opinion polls had us rolling on the floor laughing. Funny gets you ROTFL but it takes something else to make you smile: something that gives you joy. The subtext of that news that the Congress was stepping up its efforts to throttle freedom was like sweet music to me. That joy was a Diwali bonus and I thanked all my favorite gods for it.

Tired though the cliches are, let me use them because they are so appropriate about the Congress. They are seeing the writing on the wall. They are shaking in their boots. They are running around like headless chickens. They are flailing around like landed fish. They are shooting the messenger because they are afraid of the message. They are burying their heads in the sand. They are closing the barn doors after the horses have fled. They are stuck up [redacted] creek without a paddle.

I understand where the Congress leaders are coming from. Caught in terminal decline, they are in those critical stages that precede the onset of catatonic shock. In their desperation they grabbed what they could out of their old bag of tricks. Some particularly dimwitted leader (Rahul, is that you?) came up with what he or she must have thought was a brilliant idea: ban the publication of opinion polls. Gag orders all round. At least some of the Congress leaders are not uneducated ignorant dehatis (just kidding — but only about the dehati bit), and I am sure they cringe at having to defend this kind of insanity.

People who are secure in their position don’t do stupid things. Everyone makes mistakes but to make a real disaster of a mistake, the mind has to be gripped by fear to the point of distraction. It does not require a genius to recognize that while the opinion polls are bad news for them, attempting to gag them is futile and will only draw more attention to them.

Censorship is a hoary Indian government tradition. Books, magazines, movies, songs, court transcripts, investigation reports and any criticism of sacred political figures have been routinely banned by the government. It is a damning indictment of the politicians that they treat the public with such naked contempt that they justify it on the grounds that the public should be protected from information as if they are easily misled mindless morons. Perhaps not without some justification, one may cynically add, because the public has been indeed misled for so long.

Gagging is an old trick much beloved of the Congress (and occasionally others too) but it does not work any more in this new age of them Internets and social media. The government could, did and continues to successfully control the traditional channels of information. But in an age where a significant segment of the population, albeit a minority, have access to social media, censorship has the opposite and beneficial effect. It’s a network age and as the American internet activist John Gilmore so pithily put it, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

In the pre-Net days, ban a book or a movie and you could be reasonably sure that it would not be read or watched by too many. That was then, this is now. Now if you ban something, you can be reasonably certain that more people would get the message than would have otherwise. Banning drives more traffic to the object, as if sticking a flashing neon sign on it saying, “Pay attention to this because this is important for you to know.”

Here’s why I find joy in the Congress’s attempt at censoring opinion polls. I concluded long ago that India’s lack of prosperity is primarily because of the Congress and their evil ideology which promotes poverty through extractive and exploitative policies. For India to prosper, the first and unavoidable first step is to make India free of the Congress. Until now, it was difficult to the point of impossibility to remove them because they had the power to manipulate the people through their control over the information media and the nanny state they created brainwashed the poor into believing that the government was their savior.

To me, the attempt to ban opinion polls reveals forcefully that the Congress party that has caused incalculable harm to India is about to die. It is grabbing at straws to keep itself afloat. That brings joy to my heart made heavy by the distress that poor Indians suffer. Though it may not be such a big deal to others, to me this move is a shining indicator that the Congress stands at the edge of a precipice and is blinded by insanity.

As the ancient saying (usually wrongly attributed to the Greek playwright Euripides) goes, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.” I eagerly await the gods’ next move.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100212013-11-01T01:57:28Z2013-11-01T01:57:28ZContinue reading →]]> Today, Oct 31st, is the 138th birth anniversary of the man who integrated the various princely states of British India into the India we have today, Shri Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel (1875 – 1950) also known as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. He was the first “Minister of Home Affairs” and the Deputy Prime minister from 15 August 1947 until he passed away on Dec 15th 1950 at the age of 75.

He was a giant of a political leader and modern India owes him a lot. But as has unfortunately become the pattern, towering leaders of the Indian National Congress are rarely celebrated by the party; instead they elevate Nehru and his progeny — pygmies compared to the Sardar and others — to the high heavens and airbrush others out. Fortunately things are improving, thanks to the access that readers and writers have in this internet age. Now we can begin to glimpse a more accurate picture of how petty, vindictive and mean-spirited Nehru actually was; now we have something to counter-balance the hagiographic propaganda Indians have been fed for so long. Social media is a real treasure in this regard.
See these two tweets. (Note that my tweet below — at the time of this writing — has been retweeted 60 time. Goes to show that it resonated with many.)

This article by Kumar Chellappan appeared in The Pioneer last year. Here’s the full text. I have highlighted bits of it, for the record.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India, whose 137th birth anniversary is on October 31, was insulted, humiliated and disgraced by the then Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, during a Cabinet meeting. “You are a complete communalist and I’ll never be a party to your suggestions and proposals,” Nehru shouted at Patel during a crucial Cabinet meeting to discuss the liberation of Hyderabad by the Army from the tyranny of the Razakkars, the then Nizam’s private army.

“A shocked Sardar Patel collected his papers from the table and slowly walked out of the Cabinet room. That was the last time Patel attended a Cabinet meeting. He also stopped speaking to Nehru since then,” writes MKK Nair, a 1947 batch IAS officer, in his memoirs “With No Ill Feeling to Anybody”. Nair had close ties with both Sardar and VP Menon, his Man Friday.

Though Nair has not written the exact date of the above mentioned Cabinet meeting, it could have happened during the weeks prior to the liberation of Hyderabad by the Indian Army. Operation Polo, the mission to liberate Hyderabad from the Nizam, began on September 13, 1948 and culminated on September 18. While Sardar Patel wanted direct military action to liberate Hyderabad from the rape and mayhem perpetrated by the 2,00,000 Razakars, Nehru preferred the United Nations route.

Nair writes that Nehru’s personal hatred for Sardar Patel came out in the open on December 15, 1950, the day the Sardar breathed his last in Bombay (now Mumbai). “Immediately after he got the news about Sardar Patel’s death, Nehru sent two notes to the Ministry of States. The notes reached VP Menon, the then Secretary to the Ministry. In one of the notes, Nehru had asked Menon to send the official Cadillac car used by Sardar Patel to the former’s office. The second note was shocking. Nehru wanted government secretaries desirous of attending Sardar Patel’s last rites to do so at their own personal expenses.

“But Menon convened a meeting of all secretaries and asked them to furnish the names of those who want to attend the last rites of Patel. He did not mention anything about the note sent by Nehru. Menon paid the entire cost of the air tickets for those secretaries who expressed their wish to attend Sardar’s last journey. This further infuriated Nehru,” Nair has written about his memoirs in the corridors of power in New Delhi.

Nair’s friendship with Patel began during the former’s posting in Hyderabad as a civilian officer of the Army. “I was a bachelor and my guest house was a rendezvous of all those in the inner circle of the then Nizam of Hyderabad. Every night they arrived with bundles of currency notes. We gambled and played flash and the stakes were high. During the game I served them the finest Scotch. After a couple of drinks, the princes and the junior Nawabs would open their minds and reveal the secret action plans being drawn out in the Nizam’s palace. Once intoxicated, they would tell me about the plans to merge Hyderabad with Pakistan after independence. This was information that no one outside the Nawab’s close family members and the British secret service were privy to. But I ensured that this information reached directly to Sardar Patel and thus grew our relation,” writes Nair.

The relation between Nair and Sardar Patel was such that the former’s director general in the ministry told him once: “Sardar Patel keeps an open house for you.” Nair, who worked in various ministries during his three-decade long civil service career, writes that the formation of North East Frontier Service under the Ministry of External Affairs by Nehru and the removal of the affairs of the Jammu & Kashmir from the Ministry of Home Affairs are the major reasons behind the turmoil in both the regions.

“This was done by Nehru to curtail the wings of Sardar Patel,” Nair has written. Though Sardar Patel was known as a no-nonsense man devoid of any sense of humour, Nair has written about lighter moments featuring him. The one centres around VP Menon with whom Patel had a special relation. Menon had to face the ire of Nesamani Nadar, a Congress MP from Kanyakumari, during his visit to Thiruvananthapuram in connection with the reorganisation of States. Nadar barged into Menon’s suit in the State Gust House and shouted at him for not obeying his diktats. Menon, who was enjoying his quota of sun-downer, asked Nadar to get out of his room. A furious Nadar sent a six-page letter to Sardar Patel trading all kinds of charges against Menon. “He was fully drunk when I went to meet him in the evening and he abused me using the filthiest of languages,” complained Nadar in his letter.

Sardar Patel, who read the letter in full asked his secretary V Shankar, an ICS officer: “Shankar, does VP take drinks?” Shankar, who was embarrassed by the question, had to spill the beans. “Sir, Menon takes a couple of drinks in the evening,” he said. Sardar was curious to know what was Menon’s favorite drink. Shankar replied that Menon preferred only Scotch. “Shankar, you instruct all government secretaries to take Scotch in the evening,” Sardar told Shankar. Nair writes that this anecdote was a rave in the Delhi evenings for a number of years!

Balraj Krishna (92), who authored Sardar’s biography, told The Pioneer that Nehru was opposed to Babu Rajendra Prasad, the then President, travelling to Bombay to pay his last respects to Patel. “But Prasad insisted and made it to Bombay,” said Krishna. MV Kamath, senior journalist, said though Nehru too attended the funeral of Patel, it was C Rajagopalachari, who delivered the funeral oration.

Prof MGS Narayanan, former chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research, said there was no reason to disbelieve what Nair has written. “But his memoirs did not get the due recognition it deserved. It is a historical chronicle of pre-and post independent India,” he said.

Nehru was a small man. He was petty, vindictive, mean-spirited, jealous, myopic and ill-tempered. But his name adorns besmirches hundreds of institutions, roads, ports, colleges, universities, awards and whatnots. If you want to know about a people, find out whom they hold up as their heroes. Not entirely without blame, Indians have been misled into making heroes of tyrants, tinpot dictators and empty-headed playboys. The day they fully understand how worthless the whole Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan has been and how terrible the damage that family has caused India, that’s the day that India may have some hope of recovery. Let’s urgently spread the word.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100132013-10-28T06:47:22Z2013-10-28T02:02:08ZContinue reading →]]> This is a follow up to my previous post (“A Tale of Trash“). This was published on Niti Central Oct 22nd.

{Click on image to see the post from which it is borrowed (without permission) temporarily.}Making India Clean

Among the things that need to be done for improving India, making the streets clean does not appear to loom large in anyone’s imagination. When there are bigger worries – public health, education, nutrition, clean drinking water, electricity, roads, public transportation – that concern the population and the policymakers, should one worry about clean public spaces? Perhaps one should.

There are things that we can do at a local level as individuals that can make a difference. There is little an individual can do to make a noticeable difference in the big-ticket items mentioned above. We cannot all chip in armed with shovels to build roads, or organize to build a power plant. Those things require top-down planning, huge corporations, big financing, and have long lead times. But clean streets are a local, decentralized, distributed, immediately achievable outcome.

Public cleanliness is a local matter. All the garbage on the streets is locally produced and deposited on the streets by individuals. Every piece of trash was thrown by someone or the other either deliberately or thoughtlessly. If it becomes culturally unacceptable to throw trash in the streets, then the streets would be clean.

Certainly cultural unacceptability is not sufficient. Collective action in terms of having places to deposit garbage and regular garbage collection are necessary also. But without a change in the culture, streets will continue to be an eye-sore. Garbage strewn streets have a real negative effect on everyone – including visitors. One of the most commonly heard complaint from foreigners about India is that India is littered with garbage and the impression that Indians are dirty people is well justified.

Sometimes when this topic is brought up in casual conversations with other Indians, wounded pride responds with “Sure, they keep their streets clean. But don’t they pollute the global commons with their CO2 emissions and their wasteful over-consumption?” Yes, they certainly pollute globally and blame is justified. But our response to their irresponsibility should not be to pollute our own environment. If they throw rocks at us, that cannot be used as a justification for us vandalizing our own homes. Besides, if we had the opportunity to pollute the global commons, are we sure that we would not do exactly as they do?

There are regional variations in the degree of dirty streets in India. South India is relatively cleaner than North India; Kerala and Goa are distinctly less littered than UP and Bihar. Partly this must be due to the cultural acceptability of litter and partly to the quality of the governance. Both of these can be changed for the better.

An example close to India comes from Singapore—my favourite city state. As in all underdeveloped poor economies, Singapore was filthy. Fortunately when Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the great visionary statesman, took control of the newly-formed nation of Singapore in 1965, he determined that Singapore had to become clean and green. The results were spectacular: in just a couple of decades, he transformed the city into a squeaky-clean place. Littering was heavily fined and rigorously enforced. In 1992, Singapore even imposed a ban on the use, sale and importation of chewing gum.

When Singapore’s example is brought up, the normal tendency is to say that it’s a tiny city compared to India; therefore what works in Singapore will not work in India. But that objection is untenable. Laws and rules are not physical goods; they are what in economics are called “public goods.” Applying a rule at a place does not exhaust the rule so that it cannot be applied elsewhere. One person’s use of a physical good reduces the amount available for use by others. But public goods are “non-rival” in use. Regardless of how large or small the population is, rules have the same effect everywhere.

The reason I bring up Singapore in this context is to show that it is possible to change how acceptable littering is in a culture. Human behaviour is malleable to a large extent – provided the right incentives are instituted. India too can become clean and green if it gets the right kind of leadership, the kind that values public sanitation and cleanliness.

I am aware that Shri M K Gandhi was concerned and talked about public sanitation. That India continues to be dirty shows that such talk is cheap and ineffective. The Buddha stressed the use of kaushalya-upaya or “skilful means” – regardless if the goal is enlightenment or sanitation. Clearly in the context of India, exhorting people with talk about cleanliness is not a skilful means of achieving clean surrounding. It requires leadership and political will.

Public cleanliness is possible but like everything else in the universe, it does come at some cost. The question is whether there are benefits to having clean public spaces other than the most obvious ones such as that is looks nice. One benefit is that it makes people feel nice and thus promotes wellbeing, which in turn makes people more caring. There is less crime in well-maintained public places compared to neglected ones, the so-called “broken-window theory.”

Another benefit is the feeling of ownership and belonging that one feels towards clean places. The pride of ownership is a “gateway feeling.” It empowers you to start caring about what is going on in your neighbourhood and participating in the governance of your local place.

I believe that it is high time that Indian leaders took the matter of public cleanliness very seriously. It may not be as dramatic as claiming that they will make India a superpower (whatever that is) but aiming to make India a clean and green place to live in would be a wonderful change.

]]>13Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=100042014-10-03T04:43:31Z2013-10-21T03:20:12ZContinue reading →]]>One of the most enduring impressions that visitors to India carry away with them is that Indian cities are littered with trash. This is really unfortunate since trash is something that each of us can do something about and the problem is not as intractable as the big ticket problems that require collective action such as roads, power and public transportation. I recently wrote a piece for NitiCentral.com which I reproduce below, for the record.A tale of crash and culture

This is from many decades ago when I worked for a major corporation in the US. In the kitchenette in our corner of our building was a sign which simply declared, “Your mother doesn’t work here. Please pick up after yourself.” I still recall that sign with amusement and wonder at how much sense it made, and makes, even after all these years. Perhaps at home your mother cleaned up your mess but here your mother is not around to pick up after you. You are on your own here. Clear your own mess. Please.

Personal responsibility, like many other traits, is quite often culturally determined. People walking their dogs in the morning in New York City is a common enough sight – also common is seeing them pick up their dogs’ droppings in plastic bags to be disposed off when they get home. Certainly city ordinances mandate it but the place is not crawling with cops to enforce this behaviour: people do it because that’s just how it’s done.

I mention NY City specifically only because I was there recently on my way back from India. I have noted that same behaviour in pretty much every city I’ve been to in the US and in Western Europe – with the possible exception of London: there are too many Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis there. Their culture is different.

People carry their culture with them. I have an Indian venture-capitalist friend in the Silicon Valley who is married to a Japanese woman. As in Japanese homes, in their California home shoes are not worn inside. Guests are reminded in the invitation itself to please take off their shoes at the door. This is also quite common in Indian middle-class homes in India and abroad. But in the matter of cleanliness the Japanese are a class apart.

The Japanese are super fastidious when it comes to cleanliness. The essayist David Sedaris, in one of his hilarious books (actually all his books are hilarious), When You are Engulfed in Flames, recounts an incident when he was travelling in a train in Japan. His travelling companions were a Japanese couple with a toddler.

The little boy wanted to look out the window. The mother took out of her carry-on a small towel and laid it on the window seat, took off the little boy’s shoes, and stood him up in his socks over the towel at the window to watch the passing scenery. When it came time for them to leave, the mother put the shoes on her son, and then meticulously wiped the boy’s hand prints off the window pane before putting away the towel. They left the place as clean as it was before they arrived.

I have travelled in Indian trains innumerable times and watched with dismay the gay abandon with which people throw trash out the window. Not just trains: Indians toss stuff out their cars, busses and everywhere on the streets. I too have been guilty of throwing trash on the streets but in my defence I can say that it was only because the street was already littered and only because I could not find any trash can in sight.

Here’s the economics of throwing trash. Suppose you throw a bit of trash. Your benefit: the saved effort of not having to carry that one bit of trash to its appropriate place. Let’s say it’s a modest 1/10th of a rupee. If you are alone in the world, then the only cost is when you come across that bit of trash. Let’s say it is 1/100th of a rupee. Clearly the cost-benefit analysis says that it is OK for you to drop that trash.

Now suppose you have 10,000 people in your neighbourhood – not an unrealistic number when you live in a city in India. And suppose every neighbour of yours is faced with the same cost of disposing off his or her little bit of trash – just 1/10th of a rupee. They throw the trash on the street instead of properly disposing it. But when 10,000 people throw their own one bit of trash, you have 10,000 pieces of trash in your neighbourhood. By throwing the trash on the streets, each person saved 1/10th of a rupee but on the aggregate, the total amount of trash cost each one of you Rs 1,000 worth of nastiness. Each of you saved 1/10th of a rupee but suffered Rs 1,000 worth of disutility because of the trash in the streets.

Each of you saves a little but suffers a lot from the actions of a few thousand others who also save just a little. These are called “negative externalities” and “tragedy of the commons” by economists. These concepts are well worth being part of the general lexicon but they are not. It’s common sense but is unfortunately not very common.

If only we each decide to incur the cost of picking up after ourselves, then none of us will have to incur the cost of trash-littered streets. But that is going to happen only if it becomes culturally unacceptable to litter. How does that happen and why is a matter that we will go into the next time. For now, I leave you with a few pictures I took a couple of weeks ago in the streets of Leuven, Belgium.

Yes, Belgium is a developed country and the streets are clean. The question is whether the cleanliness came first or the development came first. What do you think?

]]>9Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99892013-10-03T15:46:19Z2013-10-03T15:41:11ZContinue reading →]]>Last evening I came to visit my dear friends, Urvashi and Anuj Tiku. Today I woke up in the city that doesn’t sleep and found that I’m king of the hill, top of the heap. Those little town blues melted away, and I made a brand new start of it in ol’ New York . . .

I am looking forward to a dinner with another friend, Mitra Kalita, later today. Now let’s listen to Frank Sinatra sing the 1980 hit song, “New York, New York.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99842013-10-03T14:10:52Z2013-10-03T14:10:52ZContinue reading →]]>Today’s quote is related to liberty and freedom. It is from Louis Brandeis (1856 – 1941), an American lawyer and an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

In a 1928 judgement [Olmstead v. US] he wrote:

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99752013-10-03T12:55:26Z2013-10-03T12:48:03ZContinue reading →]]>As regulars of this blog know, I advocate the liberation of education from the clutches of the government. That is not going to happen in a hurry but that means that more people have to become aware of the disaster that the Indian education system is. I wrote piece on the topic for NitiCentral recently. Here it is, for the record.Liberate the Education System

I am visiting Leuven, a little university town, population 100,000, about 25 kms east of Brussels. It has two main claims to fame. It is home to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, established in 1425, the oldest Catholic university still in existence. It is also home to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the largest brewer group in the world.

Today afternoon, September 29th, I will be speaking to a group interested in India – mostly Indian students and professionals in Leuven. My topic, as always, will be about India’s economic development or more precisely the elusive goal of India’s development. I myself have been a student most of my life: first in India and then as a foreign student in the US. Thus when it comes to the matter of India’s education I speak from personal experience.

Though it does not provoke much thought, the matter of why Indians are forced to go abroad in very large numbers to study should be of serious concern. The numbers are startling. An estimated 270,000 students – over a quarter of a million – Indians study abroad at an annual cost of US$ 8 billion which is more than twice the Union budget’s allocation for higher education in India.

Every year around 38,000 new Indian students enroll in universities abroad, mostly (32,000) for master’s degrees. This shows that there are people willing to pay for higher education and are qualified to study further but that they lack the opportunity to do so in India. India’s education system is one of the saddest stories that can be told about India.

It is hard not to compare India with other countries. A liberal estimate of foreign students studying in India is 9,000. Compare that to Singapore. Singapore’s population of 4 million is actually less than the rounding error in India’s population of 1,200 million. Yet Singapore attracts 100,000 foreign students, about 10,000 from India itself. Singapore earns around US$2.5 billion a year from foreign students.

Australia earns US$17 billion a year serving 620,000 foreign students, of which 100,000 are Indian. Annually Canada earns US$ 7 billion from 180,000 foreign students, of which 10,000 are Indians. Once again, the populations of these countries – Singapore, Canada, Australia – are mere rounding errors compared to India’s population. Yet, the number of foreign students in India is just a rounding error compared to foreign students in those tiny countries.

One last set of numbers. The US is a large rich country. It earns US$ 20 billion a year from 200,000 foreign students, half of which are from India. Which brings us to those insistent questions: why are Indians studying abroad at enormous costs? Why is India’s education system unable to educate qualified Indian students?

Engineers have built a basic computer using carbon nanotubes, a success that points to a potentially faster, more efficient alternative to silicon chips.

The achievement is reported in an article on the cover of the journal Nature.

“People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon,” says Subhasish Mitra, an electrical engineer and computer scientist at Stanford University who co-led the work. “But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof.”

You will note that half the people mentioned in that article are Indians.

Subhasish Mitra, computer scientist at Stanford University

Anantha Chandrakasan, at MIT, a world leader in chip research

Sankar Basu, a program director at the National Science Foundation

Naresh Shanbhag, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and director of SONIC, a consortium of next-generation chip design research

Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and a world leader in carbon nanotube research

These are highly qualified people, doing research and adding to the wealth abroad instead of their home country. The point is that India not only loses financial capital as a consequence of its poor education system but more seriously that it loses human capital which could have helped India progress.

Every year, tens of thousands of Indians (most of whom have done their basic education at public expense in India) migrate abroad. There they add to the human capital of advanced industrialized nations. This represents an enormous gift from a desperately poor country to rich nations. India cannot afford this kind of transfer but is forced to do so because of its dysfunctional education system.

So why is India’s education system so bad? I claim that the root cause is due to its colonial legacy. The British made the rules that hinder India’s education system. The most damaging rule relates to restricting education to the “not for profit” sector. And the rulers after the British continued with that bad policy.

This is an insidious rule created by the British so that their churches (which are ostensibly “not for profit”) could dominate India’s education and face no competition. This system creates the deracinated and alienated Indians who continue what I call British Raj 2.0.

Post 1947, those who inherited the British Raj found the system left by the British to be very convenient for their own benefit. By controlling the education system under the excuse of making it socially equitable, they were able to control not just the dominant narrative but were able to use the engineered supply shortage of educational opportunities for political gain. They, the politicians and the bureaucracy, dole out the limited supply to various groups as a quid pro quo for votes.

Indians lack the freedom to invest in the creation of schools and colleges. This is just one small but significant aspect of the lack of economic freedom. To start even the most trivially small school, Indians have to seek various permissions from several government authorities. Too often, the only way to get those mandatory permissions is by bribing and making the most blatant misrepresentations.

In my talk today at Leuven I will make the case that India’s development depends on Indians winning comprehensive freedom. More particularly, I will argue that India needs freedom from a rapacious government. This will of course not happen automatically and without a struggle. Freedom can never be taken for granted because freedom has to be won and is never granted. Becoming aware of our lack of freedom is the first step to emancipation. But for that we have to become truly educated – which in our case is difficult because of our poor education system. We have to liberate our education system so that we can liberate ourselves.

– - – - – -

Post Script: Some of the numbers in the piece above are from an infographics published by Forbes India here.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99562013-09-26T10:12:23Z2013-09-26T09:30:53ZContinue reading →]]> The Jet Airways Mumbai to Brussels flight is not too bad as far as timing goes for flights to Europe out of India. It leaves at a reasonable 2 AM (compared to flights that depart at 4 or 5 AM) and gets to Brussels at 8 AM local time (11:30 AM IST.) I caught that flight yesterday morning. A few thoughts on that flight in particular and a few on what the experience says about the Indian economy in general.
Domestically and internationally, I have favored Jet Airways over many others. Their cabin staff is courteous, their service is commendable and their equipment new. The times that I have flown Jet internationally, I have found the overall experience outstandingly good. I have traveled over 50 times between India and the US. The best undoubtedly was a business class trip on Jet between Mumbai and SFO, via Shanghai.

In light of this, yesterday’s flight was an unpleasant experience, not in the trivial details of the flight itself but in what it reveals about the Indian economy through how the airlines are forced to respond to forces outside their control.

Before this flight, I had done a few international flights in business class on Jet and a couple of economy class flights about a year ago. As I had come to expect, the quality then was good to very good. The recent flight was an entirely different story.

Around 3 AM, Jet served a small hot “wrap” — some indescribable warm roll — and nothing else. Let me stress that. There was this foil wrapped roll and nothing else, slapped unceremoniously without even a paper tissue. I asked for a paper napkin and the crew member had to make a special trip to get me a paper napkin. They were not handing out paper napkins with the roll.

“What would you like to drink, sir?”

“May I have some red wine, please?”

I got a couple of inches of indifferent red in a plastic cup.

Calling it miserable fare would be an overstatement. I noted how just a few months earlier, the service was quite different. First they got you a cold towel. Then they would get you something to drink. Then they would serve you a reasonable bit to eat, and also serve you some drinks. But this time it was just that little hot roll and not even a paper napkin.

I keep going on about the lack of even a paper napkin because it is telling. Things are not done randomly on flights. Cabin crew are instructed on what to do and what not to do. That they must have been told to not give out paper napkins is significant.

On a nine and a half hour flight, the only thing they served in economy class was that hot roll and a little breakfast close to the end of the flight. The breakfast was a small serving of omelette, a little serving of cut fruit and a small bread roll. I looked around for those little packets of salt & pepper — it was not included. They were really hard up and it was evident that cutting costs was paramount.

Around the middle of the flight, as is my habit, I go hang out at the galley. I generally get something to eat or drink and do some small talk. There wasn’t anything to eat. I said that I was surprised that they did not give out those little bags of utilities that they normally did before: a pair of disposable socks, an eye mask, a toothbrush, etc. The couple of cabin crew smiled and said that it was so.

Overall my impression was that things had changed with Jet Airways in just the few months since I had last flown them. When I got to Brussels today morning, I vented my feelings in a tweet. I was surprised to see that Jet had replied. Here it is:

@atanudey Please could you elaborate on your experience, Atanu, so that we can look into the issue.

This post is a clarification that @jetairways requested. I should stress that I am not simply bitching and moaning about their on board service. It is simply a fact that it is not what it used to be. That is also true of practically all airlines. In my over three decades of flying internationally, I have observed how quality standards have dropped monotonically. I don’t see any reason to believe that Jet Airways would be an exception.

My point is larger than on board service in a flight: I am concerned about the Indian economy. The deterioration in the quality of service provided by a major international Indian carrier is a significant leading indicator of a sinking economy. The falling rupee means that aviation fuel costs have escalated. Airlines cannot economize on fuel; so they are forced to cut costs where they can.

Mismanagement of the economy can never be costless. Someone has to pay for all the disastrous decisions taken by those in the government. All too often, those who make those decisions are shielded from the consequences of their actions — they fly first class at public expense — and we the citizens have to pay for their gross mismanagement. We all suffer, not just the airlines and the flying public.

But in a sense, we are culpable. We tolerate the injustices tacitly by not ensuring that those who are responsible for the miserable state of the economy are out on the streets. Instead, we either don’t vote at all, or if we do, enough of us vote for the same bunch of criminals into positions of power.

We have to wake up. We have a responsibility. What we endure and what we enjoy are not randomly determined by capricious uncaring forces outside our control. We must wake up to the realization that as a collective are responsible for whatever happens to us.

We, the middle class people, have the responsibility to bring about the change we must have because neither the rich nor the poor are going to do anything to change the system. The rich won’t and the poor can’t. The rich are too well off and don’t have any reason to demand change. The poor cannot afford the luxury of choosing a better future since all their energies are focused on somehow getting their next meal.

I hope and pray that we wake up but I am afraid that we may not. It is all karma, neh?

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99472013-09-24T09:32:16Z2013-09-24T09:32:16ZContinue reading →]]> The time has come for me to head back home to California. On the way there, I plan to take two short breaks: one in Belgium and the other in the New York-New Jersey area. I will be visiting my friend Yogananda Saripalli in Leuven Belgium.
Leuven is a town of about 100,000 residents. The wiki tells us that it “is home to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer group and one of the top-five largest consumer-goods companies in the world; and to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the largest and oldest university of the Low Countries and the oldest Catholic university still in existence.”

I am scheduled to give a talk in Leuven on Sunday September 29th. Here’s a brief description

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comprehensive Freedom as the Key to India’s Development

Freedom is valued by every individual. At the level of the collective, freedom is a necessary condition for the advancement of society. Only a society of free individuals can hope to progress. Lack of freedom is a barrier to growth and development. How do societies guarantee freedom to its members is a matter that deserves attention. The preferred means to it is a set of rules that provide the foundation of a society. This is usually the constitution of the state. A rationally constructed set of rules is therefore a necessary prerequisite for all development, including (but not limited to) economic development.

In this talk, we will explore the relationship between the foundational rules, freedom of individuals, and economic growth and development. The primary object of attention will be India and path to India becoming a prosperous society will be outlined. The basic provocative claim made and defended will be that India’s lack of development is because India lacks comprehensive freedom in general and economic freedom in particular.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99422013-09-23T03:00:43Z2013-09-23T03:00:43ZContinue reading →]]>Today’s quote is from Alan Watts. Born in England in 1915, he moved to the US in 1938. He lived in the San Francisco Bay area, around Berkeley. I would have loved to meet him but he passed away in 1973, full 10 years before I got to the SF Bay area.

The wiki says, “Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay “The New Alchemy” (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).” Here’s Alan Watts on the importance of living in the present.

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99202013-09-21T05:21:07Z2013-09-21T05:18:03ZContinue reading →]]> The 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has placed UC Berkeley (my alma mater) behind Harvard and Stanford in the global rankings of universities in the world.

Overall in the top 500, Berkeley is #3; of the top 200 universities, in the sciences, it is #2 and in mathematics it is #3.

I was curious if any Indian university figures in the top 500. Yes, there is one: in the 301-400 range, there’s the Indian Institute of Science. (Great job, you stupid Congress shitheads.)

Here’s a bit more on the methodology:

Berkeley is ranked third in the world using the Shanghai Jiao Tong University methodology, which focuses on quality of faculty and research. Berkeley is again the top-ranked public university, followed by UCLA (12th), UCSD (14th) and UCSF (18th).
. . .
The methodology uses four criteria to assess a university’s ranking: quality of education (worth 10% of the total), quality of faculty (40%), research output (40%), and per capita academic performance (10%). More specifically, these include Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners among faculty and alumni weighted by decade received, highly cited researchers from 21 subject areas, the number of papers in Nature and Science published between 2008 and 2012, the number of papers indexed in Science Citation and Social Science Citation in 2012. The weighted scores of these indicators are divided by the FTE of academic staff to obtain the per capita performance rating.

The total score is derived by summing these, and each institutional score is then standardized to the top-scoring university, which is assigned 100. [Source.]

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99122013-09-21T01:04:53Z2013-09-21T01:02:20ZContinue reading →]]> External shocks — the type that bring about radical change in large, complex systems — is the focus of my recent piece on Niti Central. When things are at their worst, what’s needed is a push to put matters on a different trajectory. I believe that the next general elections has the potential to deliver that for India.

Here’s the text of my piece, for the record. I should also add that in the last paragraph of the piece, I made up an “old Indian adage” just to make it sound profound. Have fun.External Shocks and Transformative Change

There’s an old joke about a hot dog vendor and a Buddhist monk which goes something like this. The vendor asks, “What would you like on your hot dog?” The monk says, “Make me one with everything.” The sublime desire to merge boundlessly with the universe contrasted with the mundane toppings of a hot dog provides the punch line. But the joke has a follow-up. The monk pays for his meal with a large bill and waits for his change. After a while he asks for the change. The hot dog vendor says, “Change comes only from within.”

When we are concerned with individual spiritual awakening, perhaps change comes only from within. When the person is ready, something within arises and brings about the necessary transformation. But it appears that in the case of large collectives and complex systems, change does not arise from within. In all such cases, change is in response to what is called an “external shock.” Radical or transformative change is exogenous — arising from factors outside the system — rather than endogenous — arising from within the system.

Systems are temporally stable, and they evolve but only gradually. Over long periods of time you can tell that changes have happened but each stage of that change is imperceptible. For instance, speciation takes place in biological time — hundreds of thousands of years — although the change between the generations is not noticeable. Evolution is like that but revolution is sudden, disruptive and dramatic. Systems move from one stable equilibrium to another driven not by some internal impulse but from an agent that is external to the system. This is an external impact or shock to the system.

The primary thesis of this piece is that external shocks bring about radical change and that without external shocks, it is generally not possible for systems to change their trajectory radically. Transformations are revolutionary, not evolutionary. Now for some examples that illustrate the basic point. These are just-so stories and although they don’t prove the thesis, they do support the conjecture sufficiently to make it plausible.

One of the most cataclysmic events in earth’s history is the one which is called the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event. Around 66 million year ago, an asteroid or bolide hit the earth in what is today the Gulf of Mexico. The 180-km wide impact zone is known today as the Chicxulub crater discovered in the late 1970s.

For hundreds of millions of years, life on land was dominated by the dinosaurs. Then the K-Pg event happened and destroyed three-quarters of all plant and animal life — including the non-flying dinosaurs. (Birds, including the chicken in the tikka masala, are the descendants of the surviving flying dinosaurs.) The big boom heard around the world was an external shock. Nobody experiencing the event liked it. And no 0ne could have prepared for it because no one was expecting it. But what it did was it shifted the trajectory of life on earth and allowed the mammals to take over. We humans owe our dominance on the planet today to that external shock delivered so brutally by a stray asteroid.

That was the mother of all disruptive events. They do not happen frequently but system-wide disruptions happen often enough to keep the story interesting. Things go on uneventfully for hundreds of years — and then BAM! An external shock.

External shocks come in various forms. You can have a disease that kills off a significant proportion of the population. The devastating pandemic known as the Black Death killed an estimated 30 to 60 per cent of the population of Europe in the years 1348-50 CE. Between 75 and 200 million people died but it changed the course of European — and human — history. That was an external shock that cleared the field for social and economic transformation of Europe.

Fires and earthquakes are external shocks. San Francisco was destroyed by the fires that followed the earthquake of 1906. It is a fine city today because it was built anew following that disaster. Wars are large-scale human actions but they too provide external shocks. London, Berlin and Tokyo are examples of cities that were destroyed and then rebuilt. Destruction of the old order forces the creation of a possibly better new order. Cities which have never had the misfortune of being massively destroyed don’t get the opportunity to rebuild. Metros such as Mumbai and Kolkata are the poorer today for not having endured any external shock ever.

Foreign invasions are examples of external shocks. Marauding armies disrupt and lay waste the land but for better or for worse, disrupt and bring about radical change. We have to be very clear that change is probably good for someone but change is always bad for someone or something. Change is never good for those who prospered in the old order: which is precisely why in human society, radical change is so strenuously resisted by those in power. Revolutions are not started by those who dominate the existing order.

This brings us to what appears to be a dominant theme in the context of India today. If I had a penny (small change) for every call I hear for change in India, I would definitely be a millionaire. Every two-bit politician and social activist is clamouring for change. None of them are credible because they are doing quite well in the existing order. The most non-credible calls for change are the ones that come from the members of the ruling dynasty and their lackeys. It would be more believable if the dinosaurs were calling for an asteroid to hit the earth and bring about change.

For decades, the politicians and political parties in India have had a great time. India has suffered and failed to keep pace with the developing world but the politicians have done remarkably incredibly well. They have become rich and have impoverished India in their greed for wealth. It would be insanely unrealistic to expect them to bring about the transformation of India into a developed country because it would mean the end of their dominance.

What India needs is not evolutionary change but radical change. This radical change can only be delivered by someone or something that is external to the system. In other words, an external shock. How would we recognise that external shock? The simplest test is this: if everyone prospering in the current system is against someone, that someone is capable of bringing about the disruptive change. Their fear is well founded because any disruptive change will certainly put an end to the cosy little scheme that has worked so well for them for so long.

For decades India has been forced to follow the ‘socialist’ path. Great prosperity has been promised by those in control. Prosperity did happen but it was only for those in power; the rest of the people languished in poverty. Those same people in power continue to talk loudly about progress and growth but it should be clear that their policies cannot deliver even if they really wanted to. It is also easy to understand that they will not change their policies because if they did, they would be admitting that they failed disastrously. Policy change can only happen following an external shock.

India needs radical, transformative change. It cannot be delivered by the same old policies made by the same old parties. The old Indian adage goes, if you want to change your life, change your mind. I would add: to change your mind, change your brain. In the context of India, only change in leadership will bring about policy change. And that change in leadership can only be through an external shock.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=99042013-09-20T03:51:20Z2013-09-20T03:51:20Z
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98852013-09-19T08:34:45Z2013-09-18T14:53:59ZContinue reading →]]>The sitemeter counter on this blog (see right hand side column) is creeping up to the 2 million number. Right now at 8:15 PM IST it is this:

I hope to catch it at exactly 2,000,000 in a few minutes. I will update this post as soon as that happens — and if I can screen-capture it. I am busy-waiting on the event.

At 8:21 PM IST:

At 8:28 PM IST:

At 8:31 PM IST — nail biting suspense time:

At 8:38 PM IST — almost there:

\

At 8:39 PM IST — CONGRATULATIONS and THANKS!!!

OK, enough of self-indulgent behavior. Now back to work. It is all karma, neh?

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98792013-09-17T11:37:25Z2013-09-17T11:37:25ZContinue reading →]]> The typewriter monkeys in the basement have been slacking off too much. But the riot act has been read out to them. It seems that their pace will likely pick up — and if it doesn’t, they will be fired. However they need to be paid. So if you wish to help out with the bananas and peanuts the monkeys relish, you could mail them in. But it may be easier for you to just click on the shiny new “Donate” button (conveniently placed on the right hand side column) and I will buy the provisions. OK?

Alright. Now if you have anything on your mind, please feel free to say it in the comments. Bouquets, brickbats, kudos and criticisms welcome.

The positive response to a Modi candidacy had been clearly anticipated in last week’s ET Confidence Survey of 100 leading CEOs. Almost three-fourths of those polled said they wanted Modi to be India’s next prime minister, reflecting Corporate India’s wish for a strong and decisive leader. In contrast, Rahul Gandhi got the backing of just 7%.

Those seven CEOs who prefer Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi are either retarded or are CEOs because of Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi’s patronage (or both.) Raul Vinci has absolutely no qualifications for even being a manager at a McDonalds restaurant, leave alone manage a huge country. People who prefer Raul over Narendrabhai Modi are the kind that cannot distinguish between chalk and cheese.

I want to know who these idiot CEOs are so that I can short their companies’ stocks.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98692013-09-13T09:46:25Z2013-09-13T09:46:25ZContinue reading →]]>Today marks the end of 10 years of this blog and the first day of the second decade of “Atanu Dey on India’s Development.” On Sept 12th, 2003, I had started this blog with the first post “Inspiration“.

Today is also the start of the first step in “Transforming India.” Not too shabby, if you ask me. Good luck to us all.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98672013-09-09T08:50:57Z2013-09-09T08:50:57ZContinue reading →]]>Wanted to wish you all a quick happy Ganesh Chaturthi. I have to run for a talk at the Center for Civil Society in New Delhi right now but later in the day I will do my traditional post on Ganesh. See Ganesh in Ireland for now.
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98502015-01-03T07:36:17Z2013-09-08T07:50:42ZContinue reading →]]>Let me tell you a funny story about young Albert and Wallace the lion. The final lines of the poem surprisingly express a profound economic truth which gets too often ignored by government officials. As it happens, we can learn quite a bit if we care to look below the surface of simple tales. So here’s the story.

The Lion and Albert

Young Albert was visiting the zoo with his parents, Mr & Mrs Ramsbottom. He was bored and poked Wallace the lion (who was lying in his cage in a somnolent posture) with his stick. The lion swallows Albert whole. Mrs Ramsbottom is vexed and the case finally reaches the authorities. Here is the final part of the poem by Marriott Edgar:

The manager wanted no trouble
He took out his purse right away
And said, “How much to settle the matter?”
And Pa said “What do you usually pay?”

But Mother had turned a bit awkward
When she thought where her Albert had gone
She said, “No! someone’s got to be summonsed”
So that were decided upon.

Round they went to the Police Station
In front of a Magistrate chap
They told ‘im what happened to Albert
And proved it by showing his cap.

The Magistrate gave his o-pinion
That no-one was really to blame
He said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms
Would have further sons to their name.

At that Mother got proper blazing
“And thank you, sir, kindly,” said she
“What waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy lions? Not me!

Now here’s the serious part. Creating wealth (children or whatever) is costly. If that wealth gets wasted (children being eaten by lions or one’s property being taken away by the government), it becomes pointless to produce the wealth. That is people refuse to incur the cost of producing wealth if they cannot enjoy the product of their labors. Mother is rightly indignant and refuses to engage in this costly business of raising children only to feed ruddy lions.

Wealth is created by people who have an incentive to create it. If the government keeps taking away the wealth created by productive people and distributing it to those who don’t produce, eventually the process of the creation of wealth will slow down, if not stop altogether.

In the final analysis, the job of the government is to ensure that there are no barriers or disincentives to the production of wealth. The production of wealth is a positive-sum game. An entrepreneur making a profit by producing something that consumers want to buy is not stealing from the customers. In a market economy both parties to a voluntary trade benefit.

If out of envy or a misguided aim of achieving equality through redistribution the entrepreneur is denied his fair share of the wealth he created, soon enough the entrepreneur will stop producing wealth.

What is Wealth

The distinction between money and wealth is too frequently erased in common parlance. Failing to distinguish between the two has disastrous consequences. Confusing the two, many well-meaning people end up proposing policies that directly lead to poverty.

Money is not wealth. The conflation of money and wealth happens because wealth is always counted or spoken of in terms of money. We say that Bill Gates has umpteen billion dollars or that I have $10K to my name. The dollars (money) is an instrument that is used to represent wealth.

So what is wealth? An operational definition will have to do. Whatever we use to eat, to wear, to shelter, to make our lives more comfortable, to produce, to move from one place to another, . . ., and for a million other human activities is wealth. Wealth is that which is produced by human action.

What about things that occur naturally and we use them? Is petroleum wealth? Is gold wealth?

Yes, natural endowments such as oil and other minerals found in the earth are (indirectly) wealth. But even in those cases, human action is necessary to transform natural substances into wealth.

Take petroleum. Only about 200 years ago, if your land was oozing that black liquid, you were shit out of luck — your land was worthless for growing crops. Then someone invented the internal combustion engine and some others figured out how to refine the crude oil, and what was a nasty liquid became immensely valuable. It became wealth only because of human action.

A mountain of uranium is not wealth until humans figure out the physics of fission and the engineering of nuclear reactors.

Repeat after me: Wealth is created by human action. Wealth is created through the action of free humans cooperating with other free humans.

Is gold wealth?

Are gold, diamonds, emerald, rubies, pearls wealth? Yes and no. To the extent that they are used in producing wealth (as defined above), they are wealth. Gold and diamonds are used in industrial processes which create wealth. For instance, diamond is used in cutting tools and gold is used in electronics.

Gold is also used as money. When it is used as money, gold is not wealth. Gold in use to produce stuff (wealth) can be called wealth but not when it is used as money. To appreciate that point, we have to talk about money (which we will do eventually.)

Knowledge goes into the production of wealth. Knowledge is the “know how” — how to do something. Technology is another word for “know how.” Technology is wealth (since it helps create useful stuff.)

Wealth is Costly

Something is costly when it costs you something to have or produce. Sounds trivial but still we need to keep that in mind. It costs something to produce.

You don’t get food without at the very least going out and picking up the fruits and vegetable, or hunting an animal and then making them palatable by cooking. You don’t get clothes without labor; nor do factories spring out of the ground unbidden. Roads have to be built and maintained. Cars have to be manufactured. You get the point: enormous effort is usually expended to create wealth.

Money is Cheap

Money, on the other hand, is easy to produce. You can produce money by just printing some of the stuff. These days you don’t even have to print any — simply keep track of how much money people have in a computer spread sheet and then use digital crediting and debiting of the accounts as you buy and sell stuff. What we are doing with money is keep track of the real exchange of wealth between people.

So wealth is costly to produce but money is not costly.

You can double the amount of money everyone has without making anyone better off. But double the amount of wealth available, and you are in fat city.

Another way to fix the distinction between money and wealth is to do a thought experiment. Imagine if all the money were to simply disappear from the world in one instant. That is, all bank notes and all accounts of how much money who has. It would be disastrous but it will not be fatal.

However, if all the wealth were to disappear, it would be fatal. If the houses, the factories, the roads, the food in your pantry, the food in the markets, the clothes on your back — that is all wealth were to disappear, we would be dead within a few days.

For now, we have briefly distinguished between money and wealth. Money is nominal and wealth is real. The real economy and the nominal economy do interact. But they are distinct and that distinction does make a difference. In the next bit, I will explore the consequences (quite serious) of not keeping them separate.

Money is useful but it can be misused to destroy wealth — or at least retard the creation of wealth. It can be misused to steal wealth from the producers of wealth and thus blunt the incentive to produce wealth.

Money lies at the root of much evil that destroy wealth. This is a moral truth that has economic content.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98462013-09-08T03:15:09Z2013-09-08T03:15:09ZContinue reading →]]>We all know that politicians by and large are corrupt. They steal from the public by a variety of means, ranging from kickbacks on purchases (defense equipment is a favorite) to allocation of scarce resources (radio spectrum and land are examples.) But as I have argued before on this blog, public corruption is a consequence of government control of the economy which is mandated by Nehruvian socialism. Being in control of the economy is hugely privately profitable. The profits from public office are well publicized. That’s one side of the equation of profit and loss. What about the loss?

I think we have to be more mindful of the loss.

If A were to steal $10 from B, then B’s loss is A’s gain. That’s a zero-sum transfer. But if A’s gain of $10 were to impose a loss of $100 on B, then that’s a negative-sum transfer.

In the case of public corruption brought about by government control of the economy, the loss is negative-sum. The loss to the economy is orders of magnitude greater than the gain that the corrupt politicians make.

I have done an order of magnitude calculation of how much India has lost over the last 60-odd years. It comes to a staggering $120 trillion ($120 million million).

India’s actual rate of economic growth averaged over 60 years is around 2.1 percent per year, what I call the “Nehru rate of growth” because Nehru was the principal author of India’s socialist development policy. As I argue below, it is one of the greatest man-made disasters in the world. It was totally flawed, and the misery that it caused (and still causes) was entirely avoidable. Considering the present state of India is distressing but it is useful if considered side by side with an alternative that was possible. The counterfactual has to help move us to take a different path. Later on in the series, we will discuss what we have to do.

In the alternative scenario, I used a 6 percent long-run average annual per capita growth rate. Is that reasonable? Yes it was easily possible, and what is more, it still is. India is large, just like China. In 1978, they were both at the bottom of the economic heap, neck and neck in most measures of economic development. China got lucky and its leader Deng Xiaoping (1904 – 1997) steered China out of the socialist trap and made it into a market economy open to foreign investment. China’s economic growth was impressive, to say the least. Over a period of 30 years, it grew at an average around 8 percent annual growth rate. Today China’s economy is at least four times larger than India’s.

India could have easily become a market-oriented, open economy by 1950, and had an average 6 percent annual growth rate for 60 years to become at present a middle-income country. India’s per capita annual income could have been around $10,000, ten times of what it actually is. Its GDP could have been $11 trillion, and India, instead of China, would be the largest economy in the world second to the US.

Economic growth at 6 percent annual rate works marvels. India would have eradicated poverty by 1970. Around 1950, India had around 250 million below the poverty line (out of a total population of less than 400 million.) Today it has 700 to 800 million below the poverty line. That’s what Nehruvian socialism has achieved – a tripling of the absolute number of poor people. Had India followed the alternative model, mass scale poverty would have been history in less than a generation. Today the problem of poverty is much harder to solve because the solution has been delayed so long.

Mass scale poverty has its fellow travellers. India has the largest number of illiterates in the world. India has the largest number of malnourished people in the world. Reports indicate that around half of India’s children below the age of five are malnourished. The overwhelming number of Indians do not have clean drinking water, access to toilets, access to schools, health care, . . . the list is long and heartbreaking. Rural Indians eke out a Hobbesian existence: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Indian farmers are a distressed lot, and one famous journalist has made his entire career solely by reporting on farmer suicides.

The above is from this post. It is worth reading, even if I say so myself.

So to answer the question posed in the title of this post “How much did the Congress cost India?”: The Nehru-Gandhi-Maino-Vadra government has cost India $120 trillion and counting.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98432013-09-04T06:41:23Z2013-09-04T06:41:23ZThe topic is “Comprehensive Freedom and Economic Prosperity.” I will post the presentation and if I get a good audio recording, perhaps that too.
]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98362013-09-02T06:01:51Z2013-09-02T05:18:02ZContinue reading →]]>Like last year in September, I am once again in Bangalore. Once again I am going to be speaking at Infosys on Wednesday. This week’s presentation (not yet composed) will be on the relationship between positive rights, freedom and prosperity. These are some of my thoughts related to last year’s presentation.

India: Past, Present & Possible Futures
September 2012

The title of a series of talks I gave recently at a number of venues in India – including Wipro and Infosys in Bengaluru and at the Asian School of Business in Thiruvananthapuram – was “India: Past, Present & Possible Futures.” As usual, I learned a great deal from the discussions following my prepared presentation. I will visit those points in a future piece. In this series of posts, I highlight some of the main points that I made in the talks.

The first main point that I attempted to convey was that economic development is critically dependent on India attaining economic freedom. Which means of course that India is not economically free since India is clearly not a developed economy. Moreover, two of the most frequently used terms when talking about the Indian economy are “reforms” and “liberalization” – both of which underline the facts that the Indian economy is dysfunctional (which is why it needs reforms) and that it is shackled (which is why it needs to be liberated).
Actually, all societies which lack economic freedom fail to prosper. This is an historically established fact and can be analytically supported from first principles. India cannot be an exception to what appears to be an universal law. Expecting India to be economically chained and still prosper materially is unreasonable and futile.

It is widely reported that India attained freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. What is not generally appreciated it that it was a restricted freedom of a specific kind. There are different kinds and degrees of freedom. There are three distinct kinds: political, economic and individual freedom.

In general, freedom has both instrumental and final values. Its instrumental value obtains from the fact that freedom is a means to some desirable end — such as economic growth. Freedom is also a final value since it is also an end itself. It is good to be free regardless of whether or not it leads to other outcomes.

It is possible to have some kinds of freedom and lack others. You can have economic and personal freedom without having political freedom, for instance. Moreover these freedoms can be ranked by individuals, depending on their specific circumstances and preferences. In my case, if I had to choose only one, I would choose economic freedom over political freedom.

Political freedom allows one to choose the form, the function and the style of the government. Personally speaking again, I don’t really care who constitute the government or what type of government it is. I am happy with any form of government as long as it delivers good governance. If the democratic form is unsuited for a country (given its particulars) and it leads to undesirable outcomes, I would be happy with a different type. I prefer the type of government that works, and I am not stuck with some ideal type that does not work.

Economic freedom allows one to do as one wills in those activities that define our economic lives, namely, production, consumption and exchange of goods and services. As individuals, we attain our best level of material prosperity (a necessary but not sufficient condition for individual welfare) only when we are free from coercion in what we produce, consume and exchange. At an aggregate level, this translates into maximum social welfare and economic prosperity.

As a student of economic development and growth, the most important lesson I have learned is this: economic growth is neither impossible nor is it inevitable. Scores of countries have been supremely economically successful demonstrates the possibility. That scores of other countries have tried and failed to climb out of desperate poverty – India being a case in point – shows that economic development is not inevitable.

Every time in public talks when I refer to India’s failure to develop, I invariably get pushback from a few audience members. How dare, they say, I claim that India is poor or underdeveloped? It’s almost as if had cast aspersions on their honor or dignity. It pains me to repeat the long list of unfortunate facts that prove that India is indeed a desperately poor country but I have to do this.

India is a poor country. It does not have to be so but it is. Not just that it is a poor country, it is an impoverished country. India has been made poor. India has been deliberately made poor. India’s poverty is a choice.

We are never entirely free of our past. We have to understand that India’s past has something to do with its present deplorable state. The future is determined by the present but we do have the freedom to choose from a set of possible futures. We have to envision that future and choose wisely.

India’s present as summed up in the dismal figures – malnutrition, child mortality, poverty, farmer suicides, social unrest, etc – should make us weep for the pain that innocent people suffer needlessly. We have to do something to change this state of affairs. We have a choice and we have to choose.

Robert Lucas, Jr., economics Nobel laureate put it thus, “I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them representing possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow . . . ? If so, what exactly? If not, what is it about the “nature of India” that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98332013-09-02T04:59:04Z2013-09-02T04:59:04ZContinue reading →]]>Robert Lucas Jr, Nobel laureate pondered India’s lack of economic prosperity and asked, “Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow . . . ? If so, what exactly? If not, what is it about the “nature of India” that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=98212013-08-31T02:29:31Z2013-08-31T02:28:56ZContinue reading →]]>The following excerpt is the tail end of a post from March 2011 — over two years ago. Read it now in the context India’s precipitous economic decline brought about by Manmohan Singh.

What have we come to? We have been diminished as a people. Our society is so impoverished that the old and infirm have to beg for a living. As a society, we are not just poor; we are impoverished — meaning reduced to poverty, deprived of richness, vitality and strength.

How did we get here? We are not evil people; we are not stupid people; periodic natural calamities have not reduced our work to rubble; foreign forces have not robbed us of our wealth; divine curse has not condemned us to hell. So why then all the misery?

I have sought an answer for many years. And here’s my answer. India’s government is the greatest evil force that is destroying India. Manmohan Singh epitomizes that evil since he heads that government. So I believe that unless we wake up and destroy those who seek our destruction, we would be responsible for our demise.

When somebody steps out to do something with good intensions, we come up with 100 negatives about that person/group.

The old adage about the path to hell being paved with good intentions comes to mind. If only, lord if only, good intentions were sufficient to ensure good outcomes. The fact is that practically everyone — with the exception of criminals, lunatics, psychotics and schizophrenics — has good intentions.

“Let me save you from drowning,” said the monkey to the fish and put it up on a tree. There are too many monkeys saving fish from drowning. Misguided action arising merely from good intentions does more harm than is commonly recognized. It remains to the wise to undo the damage done by the merely good.

There are very few, if any, such circumstances that things cannot be improved upon. This is an imperfect world which could do with some changes for the better. That’s the truth. But sadly the other truth is that we who intervene in this world are also imperfect. Even the most well-intentioned work sometimes goes terribly wrong. As the poet Robert Burns lamented,

That does not mean that we should not plan and work to bring about change. The caution is to think very deeply about what change we want and how to bring about that change. Caution is important. First understand what’s wrong with the system and only then take action.

The Buddha cautioned: First do no harm. Then try to do good.
The tailor cautioned: Measure twice. Cut once.

We are unhappy about the present setup. We want change. But what is that change we so deeply desire? What should we do to bring about that change?

Let me restate Mr Rajesh Debnath’s position:

a. Something needs to be done to fix the present situation.
b. Someone is doing something with good intentions.
c. Therefore we should all go and support that someone without critically examining his motives or his methods.

It does not work that way. Sure we want change. But change is a vector, not a scalar. Change has a magnitude and a direction. You cannot just say that the goal is 5 miles away from where we are; you have to specify not just the distance but also the direction in which to proceed.

Too often the direction is wrong. One day they get rid of dictator X and then a few years later X’s successor Y proves to be worse than X. See what’s happening in Egypt for a contemporary example of this phenomenon.

The problem with India is that there is too much government and too much government control. We need less of both. But AAP and Kejriwal is demanding more government and more government control. He is in effect saying that the government is insufficiently in control of the country and the change he proposes is that he would be made in charge of the government so that he can impose even more control on the country.

I believe Kejriwal is not just misguided but that he is positively dangerous.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97902013-08-23T06:27:17Z2013-08-23T06:27:17ZContinue reading →]]>More and more people are coming around to the realization that the man (I use the term loosely) who has enabled the loot of the country and driven its economy into the ground is despicable. Hundreds of millions already poor people will suffer increased hunger and deprivation. To say that I despise him barely comes close to how I feel. Anyone who feeds the awful monster of poverty with hundreds of millions of humans is an über-monster.

I usually use that line as a sign off to some of my posts. But this time I lead with it because — well, let me come to that. Karma is a Sanskrit word whose meaning is difficult to convey precisely but the two (of the many) important facets of the word are salient in this context. First is karma as action, and the second the consequence of action. This bears repetition: the same word refers to action as well as the consequences of action. This is by no means accidental.Karma

What that points to is that action and its consequences are inextricably intertwined and inseparable. You cannot have one without the other. You makes your action and you takes your consequences, as I say.

You may ask, “But where does this ‘karma, neh’ bit come from?” It is from Shōgun, the 1975 novel by James Clavell set in samurai Japan around 1600. One of the principal characters is the daimyo Toranaga. I was much impressed by the character of Lord Toranaga and if I recall correctly it was he who often made the observation that it was all karma — meaning it was as it should be because that’s how the universe operates.

I searched the web and could not find the exact quote from Shōgun. Therefore it is possible that I just made it up but Toranaga does hold forth on karma a lot. Consider —

Karma is the beginning of knowledge. Next is patience. Patience is very important. The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san. patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don’t give way to the seven, you’re patient, then you’ll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.

In there Toranaga is addressing the English sailor John Blackthorne, another principal character in the story who is the pilot (or ‘anjin’, hence ‘Anjin-san’ or “honorable pilot”) of a Dutch vessel.

And this bit —

Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you do will change that. Today you are alive and here and honored and blessed with good fortune. Look at this suset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.

He does say “…it’s beautiful, neh?” though. So it is possible that he occasionally said “karma, neh?” Anyhow, let’s move on.

People often mistranslate the world karma, to say nothing of the misunderstanding of the concept. Karma definitely does not mean ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ in the sense that things are fated or predestined. In fact, it means precisely the opposite. Karma means that it is our actions that determine the future, that what we do matters and has consequences. The concept is a general formulation of the fundamental law of action and its consequences, a specific instance of which are Newton’s laws of motion. Therefore it is the ultimate statement of “The Buck Stops Here.” And so when one says, “It is all Karma”, one is acknowledging that what we do matters and we are ultimately responsible for what we enjoy or suffer.

Endogenous and Exogenous Suffering

It was in the quest to understand the nature and causes of existential suffering that the prince Gautama became the Buddha. The Buddha’s realization was that to break free of suffering, one has to follow what he called the Noble Eight-fold path. Look it up for details. The short form is that do the right action and the cessation of suffering follows.

The existence of suffering impresses me very powerfully in India. The suffering that the Buddha showed a way out of is not our mundane material suffering. His inquiry related to a much broader definition of suffering than just the lack of stuff that makes our material existence harder than it ought to be. Suffering arising out of material deprivation is the easiest to fix and given that the Buddha walked the earth within the confines of present-day India, one would have expected India to be the last place to suffer materially.

Be that as it may, suffering is a consequence of wrong actions. While this is true both at the level of the individual and at the level of the collective, there is a distinction. The individual suffers not only the consequence of his own action (which I term “endogenous suffering”) but also the consequence of the collective that he is part of (which I term “exogenous suffering.”) In other words, individual suffering is partly due to individual karma and partly due to collective karma, and collective suffering is entirely due to collective karma.

The accident of birth determines how much collective or exogenous suffering one is subject to. If you are lucky to be born in a developed nation, most of what you suffer is probably your own karma. But if you are unlucky and are born in a desperately poor country — such as India — regardless of how wonderful your own karma or action is, you nevertheless will suffer the consequences of collective karma.

India’s Collective Karma

The high prices, inflation, shortages, lack of infrastructure, pervasive public corruption, criminal politicians, . . . the ills that India suffers are legion. Enumerating them would be depressing and tiring. None of these are accidental or capricious. They are the consequences of actions of the collective. Do the wrong thing collectively, and do it consistently over an extended time, and the consequences inexorably follow.

An individual may be wise, diligent, moral, compassionate, entirely blameless of any malice and an all round wonderful specimen of humanity. But that is not going to shield him from the suffering that the collective karma has in store for him. In simple terms, if the collective is stupid, his ass is grass.

There is no way to sugar-coat this one: the collective is stupid beyond measure. You may call me an elitist or whatever but my claim is irrefutable based solely on the evidence on the ground. The misery that the average Indian suffers arises from collective stupidity.

You want evidence? Fair enough. The country has been misgoverned for at least the past two centuries. But never in its modern history has it been so dramatically badly managed. The Congress under the dispensation of the Nehru-Gandhi clan always epitomized criminal incompetence but under Italian Maino-clan, it has plumbed abysmal depths that no one could have imagined. The man heading the government is a gutless, emasculated, lobotomized, morally bankrupt, ethically handicapped, voiceless, spineless, bottom-dwelling worthless piece of scum.

And yet — and yet — the Congress is in the running to form the next government after having dragged the country deeper into poverty. That is, there are tens of millions of people who would freely choose to vote for the bunch of criminals. They apparently have not had enough of the Congress/UPA.

That, ladies and gentleman, is what is called collective stupidity.

Whatever our individual karma, we are bound to suffer the karma that arises out of collective stupidity.

Like the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, here are the Four igNoble Truths:

First, there is the truth of material suffering.

Second, the truth about the cause of material suffering — collective stupidity.

Third, the truth about the cessation of material suffering — bury the Congress/UPA.

Fourth, the truth of the Noble Five-fold Path to burying the Congress/UPA.

Stay tuned.

]]>8Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97702013-08-16T18:59:50Z2013-08-16T18:59:50ZI am leaving for Mumbai in a few hours. I will arrive early morning Sunday. Bye for now.
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97632013-08-15T13:29:28Z2013-08-15T13:29:28ZContinue reading →]]>

Aug 15, 1872: Sri Aurobindo was born. He fought for India's independence. That struggle is still incomplete.

Happy birthday wishes to my friend Rajesh Jain who is continuing the struggle for India’s freedom. Remember that Sri Aurobindo said, “India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.”

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97592013-08-14T15:11:23Z2013-08-14T15:11:23ZContinue reading →]]>Not sure if that would appeal to the masses but perhaps they may like being free. Perhaps they should think of how to break free of their serfdom.

“What do you think of Indian independence?”
“I think it would be an excellent idea.”

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97342013-08-10T03:19:08Z2013-08-10T01:19:45ZContinue reading →]]>Jagdish Bhagwati has been much in the English popular press in India recently. I have been familiar with his work since my econ grad school days. I had done a couple of courses on international trade (taught by the great Prof Pranab Bardhan) and read from Bhagwati & Srinivasan’s venerated textbook “Lectures on International Trade.” I have referred to Prof Bhagwati on this blog several times previously.

I have learned a lot from Prof Bhagwati and find myself on the same side as he on many political economy issues. Which is more than I can say about Prof Amartya Sen. I think Sen is a brilliant man but I am situated almost diametrically opposite to him on the ideological plane. I believe his policy prescriptions are ultimately severely damaging to India and its development. Like most people, present company included, Sen has his biases: his bias happens to be towards socialism and statism (the government control of economic and social policy.) This suits the UPA and the Congress party really well. What surprised me was that Sen waded into the cesspool of Indian politics and showed himself to be a shill for Antonia Maino by declaring that Narendra Modi is not fit to be the PM of India.
Which side of the Bhagwati-Sen public argument I would come down on should come as no surprise to the readers of this blog. I am allergic to socialism and its fellow travelers. As a mechanism for organizing economic activities, there’s no substitute for markets. In the political sphere, I believe in a constitutional representative government but with serious conditions on qualifications for voters and candidates. Markets and democracy work provided the rules are well-understood, enforced and followed.

Bhagwati contributed to the development literature significantly. Here’s an excerpt from a 1995 paper of his titled “The New Thinking on Development.” This excerpt is taken from the last page of the paper where he talks “about the relationship between political democracy and economic development.”

=== ** Begin excerpt ** ==

Democracy and Markets

. . . Both theory and empirical evidence teach us that, all other things being equal, well-functioning markets lead to development. Sometimes such markets are present in democracies, sometimes not. The same holds true for authoritarian countries. That leaves us with four types of countries:

Market democracies. By and large, these are the Western democracies; they had strong performance indicators until the OPEC crisis of 1973; they also have generally good social-welfare indicators.

Nonmarket democracies. India is the prime example, compiling poor post-independence records in both economic performance and social indicators.

Market authoritarianisms. China in the last decade, and the Far Eastern countries since the 1960s, belong here; they had rapid success in diminishing poverty, and their social indicators are not bad.

Nonmarket authoritarianisms. These are the ex-communist countries; they are abysmal failures in terms of both growth and social indicators.

What can we learn, if anything, from this typology? With due mindfulness of the defects of this rather crude categorization, which leaves out many of the finer points concerning various political and economic systems, let me suggest three broad but defensible lessons.

The first is that where neither democracy nor markets function, incentives for production and innovation will be so weakened as to impair productivity and growth. The second is that markets can deliver growth, with or without democracy. The third is that democracy, without markets, is unlikely by itself to deliver significant growth.

The last proposition, which speaks naturally to India’s postwar experience until the current reforms, is perhaps the most interesting to contemplate further. Why should the relative lack of well-functioning markets nullify democracy’s possibly favorable effects on development?

The answer leaps out from the pages of modern Indian history. Democracy, with its civil and political rights–including freedom to travel, study, and work abroad–has enabled elite Indians, who have had access to modern education for over a century, to master and even improve on innovative ideas and technologies from everywhere. But Indians’ ability to translate expertise into effective innovation and productive efficiency was seriously handicapped by the web of statist restrictions that long straitjacketed economic decision making. Thus while Indian surgeons were quick to get to the frontier in open-heart surgery, the inability to import medical equipment without surmounting strict exchange controls, even when gifts were at issue, prevented the effective diffusion of technology to India on a scale commensurate with her abilities. Equally, the incentives to produce and innovate were seriously compromised because the returns to such activity could not be substantial when there were extensive restrictions on production, imports, and investment.

By contrast, the market authoritarianisms of East Asia profited immensely from the diffusion of technology that their substantially freer domestic and international markets permitted and facilitated. The economic interventions of the Indian government, after the early postwar years of more satisfactory growth and promotional rather than restrictive policies, degenerated quickly into a series of “don’ts” that straitjacketed the economic decisions of the citizens. On the other hand, the Far Eastern economies worked with a series of “do’s” that left considerable room for freedom to produce, innovate, and experiment with new technologies from abroad. The chief lesson may well be that democracy and markets are the twin pillars on which to build prosperity.

=== ** End excerpt ** ==

What Bhagwati wrote 18 years ago is still relevant in today’s India. Indians need the freedom to participate in free markets. But that is not going to happen as long as the dead hand of Nehruvian socialism controls India through the Antonia Maino-led UPA. We need to get rid of her and her gang.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97282013-08-07T22:18:03Z2013-08-07T22:18:03ZContinue reading →]]>Julian Assange of Wikileaks, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden point to a very disturbing trend. The people are losing control of their government. The government is getting bigger and more intrusive. An opinion piece by Jesselyn Radack in The Washington Post (Aug 2nd) says, “Bradley Manning’s conviction sends a chilling message.” Here’s an excerpt, for the record.

Prosecuting someone for espionage is one of the most serious charges you can level against an American. The term is so incendiary that it alienates a whistleblower’s natural allies among open-government, transparency and civil liberties advocates. To add insult to injury, reporters who bravely cover these cases and the lawyers who zealously represent those who speak truth to power now find themselves criminalized . . .

Opponents of whistleblowers can irresponsibly shout menacing words about lawyers and journalists facing criminal charges of aiding and abetting or being an accessory to a crime, but their ignorance is on full display. The most recent example is former NSA and CIA director General Michael Hayden calling the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald a “co-conspirator” for writing a series of stories that exposed massive NSA surveillance programs based on Edward Snowden’s disclosures . . .

In this case, the people being prosecuted are those who disclosed fraud, waste, abuse and illegality of the highest order for the purpose of benefitting the public. It sends the most chilling of messages to jail truth-tellers and dissenters, essential actors in maintaining an informed citizenry, which lies at the heart of a free and open democratic society. After all, in our grand experiment with democracy, the people are supposed to control the government, not the other way around. The work of the government is supposed to be public and people’s personal lives private, not the other way around. There are a number of brave souls trying to correct the trajectory of decline that our country is on. Public servants should not have to choose their conscience over their careers, and especially their very freedom.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=97122013-08-03T17:55:25Z2013-08-03T17:46:25ZContinue reading →]]>We know that Pratibha Patil was given the job of playing president of India in recognition of her service as a cook in Indira Gandhi’s kitchen. That’s one of the more glaring examples of being a servant in the Nehru-Gandhi household — and now the Gandhi-Maino household — is a necessary qualification for high office in any Congress-controlled government. If one cannot demonstrate loyalty to the Gandhi-Maino clan by debasing himself or herself, one cannot have or even hold on to one’s position. Competency in the job is not a requirement.

This sorry farce started decades ago under Indira but only recently is the general public becoming aware of it. When it started, the government controlled the media. It still controls the main stream media but thanks to the internet, the alternative media (the so-called social media) is uncontrollable because it is decentralized, distributed, immense and presents almost zero barrier to entry. Anyone, yours truly included, can help open the cupboards & reveal the skeletons. The Congress cupboards are full of them.

Here’s an exclusive item from the Economist that was published by The Vancouver Sun in Nov 1980.
Quote:

Ten months after coming to office, Indira Gandhi is still converting government servants into family retainers.

The notion of an independent civil service and police force has virtually been thrown overboard. Personal loyalty is what counts . . . In effect, the country is being transformed into fiefs run by feudal lords she has appointed . . . This may help to account for the drift which ha characterized Gandhi’s second term in office . . . The erosion of civil service independence started in the early ’70s, when Gandhi called on all officials to be “committed” — to her.

Things seem to have only become worse since then. Now the Chamcha in Chief is Dr Manmohan Singh who has been the appointed prime minister since 2004. He serves at the pleasure of Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi (and at the immense displeasure of anyone not a Congress chamcha.) Every high-ranking Congress member is still a household servant.

There is something deeply depressing about a nation that does not recognize merit, that is unable to distinguish between loyalty and treachery. We have a long way to go before we become a modern civilized nation.

To which a friend emailed me saying, “You hit it. We’re not a modern civilized nation. Not only do I think we are not modern and civilized but I think those qualities are declining. The Indian state is made up of the same people that constitute Indian society. Ergo, how is endogenous change possible?” I wrote back in reply and here’s my response, for the record.

How is endogenous change possible is a great question.

I think that generally humanity advances not in lock step but in a staggered fashion. There are sections of the global population that endogenously advance in terms of becoming more civilized and more modern (both words being appropriately defined.)

Once that advance guard has established a camp, the laggards slowly move to that camp. By then, those who led would have moved further ahead. For the trailing segment, the change is catalyzed exogenously. We see others and even the dullest of us can figure out eventually that some ways of living are superior to other ways.

Let me illustrate that process in a different domain. Some societies develop and adopt the science and technology that push the boundaries.This is endogenous advance. The other societies which did not participate in the development adopt the technologies with some lag. So in time, regardless of who developed the technology, everyone adopts them.

The most accessible illustrative example of this phenomenon is certainly the adoption of information and communications technology.

Parts of the world are somewhat civilized and are continuing the journey. Other parts will eventually catch up. I believe that in about 100 years, all of the world will be at least as civilized as the currently most civilized parts of the world today. However, some parts of the world will still be more civilized than other parts. But there will never be uniformity — in any area.

I think that in 100 years, there will be no poverty though there will be rich people and poor people (relative to the rich, of course.) Poverty will decline and eventually disappear. In a similar way I believe that even the most uncivilized parts of the world today will become civilized (though they may never become stellar examples of anything at all.)

That’s how I feel. Therefore that’s how I naturally think. Which is what I usually do: feel first and rationalize later.

It just keeps getting better. The refitted Admiral Gorskhov — which is being reincarnated as INS Vikramaditya — will be delivered sometime soon but will not have anti-missile defense for a few more years. What does that make it? A heap of prettied-up scrap best used as a sitting duck for random target practice.

Is this a joke? Actually, it was launched on April 1st, 1982. Perhaps it is an April fool’s joke, although a very costly one for a desperately poor third world country (DPTWC). Here’s what I wrote over four years ago in April 2009 in a post titled “The War and the Circus.”

See the excerpt below the fold.{Begin excerpt from the April 2009 post:}

Item: In January 2004, India signed a deal to buy the antique and obsolete 1980s-design Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. Originally the deal was for $1.5 billion but the Russians later said that the retrofitting will take an additional $2 billion. The heap of prettied-up scrap will be delivered to India sometime in 2012, and it will be accessorized with 16 matching MiG-29Ks. The deal was made by the Congress-led UPA government. Pranab Mukherjee and lots of other people got lots of foreign trips out of the deal. The Indian navy big bosses must be looking forward to having another floating deck to strut about on.

I’ve been saying for a long time that aircraft carriers are just history’s most expensive floating targets, and that they were doomed.

But now I can tell you exactly how they’re going to die. I’ve just read one of the most shocking stories in years. It comes from the US Naval Institute, not exactly an alarmist or anti-Navy source. And what it says is that the US carrier group is scrap metal.

The Chinese military has developed a ballistic missile, Dong Feng 21, specifically designed to kill US aircraft carriers: “Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.” That’s the US Naval Institute talking, remember. They’re understating the case when they say that, with speed, satellite guidance and maneuverability like that, “the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased.” [1]

I believe that a large part of the answer to the persistent and pervasive poverty of the DPTWCs lies in the insanity of modern war. And the answer is that until the people realize what is going on, they are unlikely to move a finger to change the system. But then that requires an understanding of what is going on, an understanding that in our case we don’t have given the dismal state of our educational system. Indeed, one could cynically argue that the educational system is deliberately not allowed to function because otherwise the people may become smart and stop feeding the machine. Cynical but perhaps closer to the truth than what those in power want you to believe.

Meanwhile, the poor will continue to be distracted from the real issues by the routinely staged three-ring circus called “democratic elections.” Let the circus begin. Because the least one can give them in exchange for their blood, sweat and tears is some entertainment.

NOTES:

[1]. You should go read that Brecher article for more but I cannot resist quoting a bit more from it because I like the way he puts it:

The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier. And that goes for the ones running the US surface fleet as much as it does for the GM or Chrysler honchos. Hell, they even look the same. Take that Wagoner ass who just got the boot from GM and put him in a tailored uniform and he could walk on as an admiral in any officer’s club from Guam to Diego Garcia. You have to stop thinking somebody up there is looking out for you.

Remember that one sentence, get it branded onto your arm: “Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.” What does that tell you about the distinguished gentlemen with all the ribbons on their chest who’ve been standing up on carrier bridges looking like they know what they’re doing for the past 50 years? They’re either stupid or so sleazy they’re willing to make a career commanding ships they know, goddamn well know, are floating coffins for thousands of ranks and dozens of the most expensive goldplated airplanes in the history of the world. You call that patriotic? I’d hang them all.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=96752013-07-31T18:12:49Z2013-07-31T17:49:59ZContinue reading →]]>Today is the 101st birthday of Prof Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006). His erudition, eloquence and dedicated struggle for human freedom and dignity have helped advance civilization. Here he is on Phil Donohue’s show in 1979. In this 2-minute extract, Donohue asks him about capitalism and greed. The response is classic Friedman — devastating but funny, profound and based entirely on common sense. Happy 101st birthday, Milton Friedman. May your tribe increase. Your eloquence has illuminated the world.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=96642013-07-31T17:10:51Z2013-07-31T15:49:43ZContinue reading →]]>Pat Condell is a hero in the true sense of the word — a warrior known for his exceptional courage and bravery. But you would not have heroes if there were no cowards. He is a heroic defender of human freedom and therefore the cowardly attacks on him. He is being censored. Vimeo took his videos down. Now YouTube has done that to some of his videos.

However, the internet is what it is because of its distributed nature. The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it, as John Gilmore put it. So here is the incomparable Pat on dotsub.com thanking the anonymous cowards who are afraid of what Pat has to say and what they don’t want you to hear.

The last bit of what Pat says is worth repeating:

Your anonymous cowardice is truly the gift that keeps on giving because, in showing the world that you’re afraid of what I’m saying, you’re not only helping me (that would be wonderful enough on its own), you’re helping every person who tries to access a disabled website or a censored video by reminding us again forcefully how precious, how fragile, and yet how essential free speech really is in the face of such a poisonous spiteful illiberal mentality that no level of intelligence could possibly redeem. People like you with your censorious little minds and your narrow horizons do more than anyone to inspire those of us who believe that free speech is the very cornerstone of our civilization to guard it jealously, to defend it, and to insist upon it absolutely unfettered, undiluted, in full, without any form of compromise, no matter who claims to be offended, and never, ever to concede an inch. I thank you for that, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Peace.

This message should be understood by those in India who are in the business of censoring and banning. But that is not going to happen. It is like that old one: if need to ask the price, you probably cannot afford it. If they have to be told, it is unlikely that they will understand.

Let me end by stressing this: free speech is indeed the cornerstone — the basic element of the foundation — of our civilization. Free speech has been the engine that has powered our on-going march from savagery to civilization. (Pardon the mixed metaphors.)

Here I will address, as promised, the matter of why the argument — that India’s failure to develop cannot be compared with Singapore’s enviable success due to differences in size — is meaningless. It is based on an absolute misapprehension of the way the world works. All we need to do to see through the matter is a little bit of common sense, a quiet place, and a bit of time to turn things around in one’s head.
Being large confers benefits. Look at it from any angle, and you will see the advantages. Large entities live longer. Compare a mouse to an elephant. Large corporations persist, and can weather downturns better than small firms. Large ships do better in storms than small boats. Large objects can affect the environment to their own benefit. A candle in the wind goes out; a large forest fire creates its own environment and whips up a storm. Large corporations can influence policy. Large suppliers can dictate prices and change the market equilibrium. Large universities have access to better faculty and students. Large cities attract the more talented compared to small towns and villages.

Look at it any which way, and you find that large entities have advantages over tiny ones. Especially being “economically” large is a great advantage.

(This graphic is just a random illustration of what is called scale economies.)

.

When it comes to economies, larger is better because of some fundamental principles. First there is the notion of specialization. As Adam Smith reasoned over 200 years ago, division of labor and specialization allows the greater creation of wealth. The degree of specialization possible increases with population, which translates into greater productivity and production.

The second matter that confers advantage to size is that large economies have large domestic markets. There are scale economies in most modern production. The more you manufacture, for instance, the lower is the per unit cost. So if you have a large domestic market, you will achieve economies of scale, which lower your costs, and that enables you to be competitive in the world market. Not just competitive but you can even create a comparative advantage for yourself. Large economies have power to change the terms of trade to their advantage.

As human civilization has progressed, the size of the interacting group has increased. From small tribes, to city-states, to nations, to blocks of nations engaged in mutually beneficial trade arrangements.

The Western European economies not too long ago became part of a large economic union — to obtain those benefits that large size affords. They would not have done so if the benefits did not out weigh the costs.

Scale Economies

It is true that there are disadvantages to size as well. Very large organizations — like oil supertankers — cannot turn on a dime. Their momentum is hard to dissipate. But that can also be an advantage. Long after they engines have stopped turning, they can coast along for quite a while. A large corporation can typically survive economic turmoil better than little shops.

Large organizations turn out more complex manufactured goods. You cannot have a small firm turn out superjumbos like the Boeing 777s or the Airbus 380. These superjumbos exist because they are super efficient. Once again, scale economies kick in.

There’s one thing we have to bear in mind, though. Merely being large does not confer any advantage. Size is necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. For a large entity to be successful, it also has to have a complex nervous system. For proper functioning, the brain has to be sufficiently large as well.

The large dinosaurs, we are told, had small brains for their physical size. That’s a recipe for disaster. Some of them evolved to have large bodies but really tiny brains. In a sense, the same can be said about India — large body and a tiny brain. We will explore this incongruity a bit later.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=96432013-07-29T06:04:39Z2013-07-28T21:26:16ZContinue reading →]]>I don’t know who is on who’s side. From afar, they look like cats of the same breed, although they ostensibly belong to competing political parties.

It is because of who Q was that George Fernandes, India’s Minister of Defence during the NDA regime, told me that he had been told by National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra “not to touch the Bofors file” – because of instructions from former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. It is no secret that Vaypayee and Advani were very accommodating about Q and his friends in New Delhi. How else can one explain why the NDA government, in power from 1998 to 2004, couldn’t arrest Q?

I wonder what kind of services Mr Brajesh Mishra provided to the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino family. Just wondering. Also wondering why PV Narasimha Rao was given shockingly shoddy treatment by the Maino-clan. What did he not do? Just wondering.

In fact, despite being a former AICC president and a prime minister, Narasimha Rao was not just excluded from the Congress Working Commitee since the current heir to the Nehru dynasty took charge of the party in 1998, he was not even allowed to become one of the numerous ‘special invitees’, most of whom get selected for their cheerleader skills rather than any other contribution.

Given that former prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi, Charan Singh and the non-prime minister Sanjay Gandhi were given state funerals and a final resting place in what may be termed the National Capital’s ‘Zone of the Dead,’ the reasons why such a privilege was denied to Narasimha Rao are obscure.

They, however, are depressingly in line with a pattern that dogged Rao since 1992, when he refused to accept that he was not a public servant, but a Nehru Family retainer. In what follows, an account is given of the circumstances behind the final humiliation of Pamulaparthy Venkata Narasimha Rao.

There is something deeply depressing about a nation that does not recognize merit, that is unable to distinguish between loyalty and treachery. We have a long way to go before we become a modern civilized nation.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=96212013-07-26T06:01:31Z2013-07-25T20:35:07ZContinue reading →]]>It had to come to this: people running to Uncle Sam complaining that they have been teased at school by someone they did not like the looks of. Taking a cue from the 65 members of the Indian parliament (what a bunch of retarded wankers) who wrote to the POTUS demanding that Modi be denied a US visa, now 65 members (that’s the whole bunch) of the Sadbhavana Group Housing Society of Rohini, Delhi have brought their complaint to the POTUS as well. Don’t know how the letter they wrote became public; perhaps Snowden or that Assange fellow had something to do with this leak. But anyhow, here’s the full text of the letter presented for your benefit. Please feel free to use it as a template to write your own letter to the POTUS regarding that idiot neighbor who plays his stereo too loud.

The President of the US,
The White House
1600 Penn. Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500

July 24, 2013

Subject: Human rights violations in Rohini area of state of Delhi and the US Policy on Mr. Vikas Gupta s/o Mr. Laxmi Charan Gupta

Dear Mr. President,

We, the undersigned members of the Madhyam Vargiya Sahkari Awas Samiti, Rohini, Delhi, are writing to express our concern about the possibility of US granting Visa to Mr. Vikas Gupta (son of Mr. Laxmi Charan Gupta), resident of ‘Sadbhavana apartments in Sector 15, Rohini.

Mr. Vikas Gupta is seeking a US Visa (for the second time) for his MS in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Your kindself may please note that the said Mr. Vikas was denied a Visa on his previous attempt, under section 212(a) (2) (g) of the ‘Immigration and Nationality Act as he was deemed ‘responsible for severe violations of religious freedom. Specifically, the charge related to Mr. Laxmi Charan Gupta, despite being a rich Hindu, refusing to contribute more than INR 5001 towards Samitis ‘Pehla Vishal Sai Jagran with 21000 Watt Sound.

As you may recall, last year Mr. Gupta had illegally constructed an extra room on the Block A roof after buying the silences of Mr. Arora (myself, Secretary), Col. Gaur (Treasurer) and Mr. Singh (President). While he did pay us in good time, his lofty promise of having frequent ‘Liquidity Sessions inside the ‘Rooftop Paradise has come to naught.

On September 11, 2012, while every Indian was re-mourning the ghastly events of 9/11, Mr. Vikas Gupta, was busy driving his new BMW 320d (white color, registration no. DL4 CAH 0911) around the society complex with trumpet horn blaring and Honey Singhs blasphemous songs playing full volume. As Mr. Sushil Shinde, our Home Minister, must have apprised you, the songs of Honey Singh were responsible for majority of rapes in India during 2012-13.

The Guptas regularly commit mass murder of peoples egos by wearing Rado watches even during the morning walk when ‘Sadbhavana seniors meet to discuss Indias failing economy and mid-day meal deaths around the country. Mr. President, it may be pertinent to note here that a distant relative of Guptas in Bihar deals in pesticides. Also, last Thursday, Mr. Gupta forgot to pay for post-walk tender coconut water for everyone.

Mrs. Guptas appearances at the ‘Sadbhavana kitty parties are also an affront to human rights. As Mrs.Singh, Mrs. Dhamija and Mrs. Pandey have repeatedly pointed out, why does a woman, with a missing sense of dress, wear new gold and diamond jewelry every month, if not for mass murder of innocent Indian women? You may like to discuss this particular atrocity with Michelle Ji.

To worsen the pogrom, now Mr. Vikas Gupta wants to go and study Computer Science in US after scoring only 89% in Class-XII and getting JEE rank of only 172, while many ‘Sadbhavana children with higher marks had to settle for the newly launched Delhi University B.Tech. (not AICTE approved!)

In view of the above cited atrocities, we as human beings and the members of the ‘Sadbhavana(meaning ‘Communal Harmony) group housing society, respectfully urge you to direct the State Department to refuse Visa to Mr. Vikas Gupta (Application no. 30127692) once again. Such a refusal will represent a formidable defense of the principles of human rights.

As India and the United States address the challenges facing our societies, the time to (once again) come together on issues of human rights and justice could not have been more opportune. We sincerely urge you to fulfill our request and stand in solidarity with the survivors, human rights activists and all those who value justice and freedom.

Enclosure: List of 64 other Society members with names and signatures.

PS: A friend emailed me this with the intro “The US embassy fears that it could soon be dragged into saas-bahu fights if the current trend continues.” I am sorry I don’t know who to attribute this gem to. Thank you for the laughs.

PPS: I learned from twitter and other sources that it is from Faking News. I should have googled to figure out the source but I did not. If Faking News wants this taken down, I will comply. Otherwise, the post stands, of course with the attribution here.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=96002013-07-26T06:06:16Z2013-07-25T20:20:27ZContinue reading →]]>The day may come when Shri Narendra Modi becomes the PM of India. All of us who fear and dread — chief among them Antonia Maino & her minions such as Diggy Singh, Shashi, Sagarika, Rajdeep, Barkha — that awful day are in good company. It is being reported that dear old Adolf too would not like Modi to lead India. Oh the humanity. Here, take a look.

(The NY Times had a nice write up on the Hitler Meme back in Oct 2008. That clip is from the German movie “Downfall” of 2004.

In the original scene, Hitler is told that his reign of power is over; he then deafens himself to reality, eloquently savages everyone who cost him his dreams, vows revenge and finally resigns himself to private grief. The homemade spoofs plug into this transformation just about any hubristic entity that might come undone . . .

The meme of the parodies — the cultural kernel of them, the part that’s contagious and transmissible — has proved surprisingly hardy, almost unnervingly so. It seems that late-life Hitler can be made to speak for almost anyone in the midst of a crisis.

)

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=93882013-07-23T16:24:34Z2013-07-23T13:45:19ZContinue reading →]]> “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

That’s Christopher Hitchens in Letters to a Young Contrarian.

I agree with Hitchens on many things, but not everything. Distrust compassion? Compassion and empathy are what make us human. I am sure that he is confusing two distinct emotions: perhaps he meant pity. Distrust pity; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Then there’s the very strange “Picture all experts as if they were mammals.” Actually, all experts are mammals. Unless of course that there are experts who are birds or reptiles. Anyway, the man was a brilliant polemicist, amazing writer and a debater par excellence. He was not a deep thinker. But then you cannot be reading & writing thousands of words a day, drinking scotch by the gallons, chain-smoking, debating, speaking at conferences, appearing on TV, making documentaries, reporting from war zones, teaching, traveling the world, promoting books — and also find the time and energy to think deeply. The bottom line: good guy who lived life king sized and mostly poured derision on the pretentious and the fake.

After I watched the movie Argo, I had a one of those Rashomon moments, a realization that there is more to the story than was related to you. You may recall Rashomon (1950) introduced the master movie director Akira Kurosawa to the wider world. Set in medieval Japan, it is the story of the rape of a woman and subsequent mutually inconsistent accounts told about the incident by various eye-witnesses. According to Kurosawa, there are no particular truths, no definitive version of what actually happened at a particular time and place. What is recalled and later told depends on the observer and the particular vantage point.Argo

The movie Argo, which won the Best Picture award in the 85th Academy Awards, is the story of how half a dozen members of the American diplomatic staff, hiding from Iranians who had captured the American embassy in Teheran in 1979, were rescued. It is thriller in which the ending has you clutching the edge of your seat, even though you know that the movie has to end with the diplomatic staff getting saved by the hero in the end.

Watching Argo was thrilling, as one would expect of an award-winning thriller. The hero of the story (depicted by actor-director Ben Affleck) is Tony Mendez, a CIA operative. Apparently, he single-handedly and at great personal risk saves the lives of those six Americans – with only a little bit of assistance from the Canadian embassy in Teheran.

The movie left me with admiration and wonder at the heroic efforts of the CIA. As the credits rolled by, I noted that the script was based on a book and a 2007 article “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans From Tehran” in Wired magazine. Curious, I clicked over to the article, and that’s where in the comments I came across a reference to a Canadian documentary about the rescue. It is made by CTV W5, a popular current affairs and documentary channel.

The Reel Story

The movie Argo made it appear as if the Canadians were at best minor actors in the whole drama. The Canadian ambassador, Kenneth Taylor, was portrayed in the movie but only as a minor character who, although involved, did not really advance the plot in any significant way. The Canadian documentary, “The Reel Story – CTV W5”, however, painted an altogether different picture. Ken Taylor risked his life and helped in hiding the Americans for nearly three months. The CIA operative was in Canada for all of one and a half days. In short, the story Argo tells is significantly inaccurate if you consider the Canadian documentary’s point of view.

As I said, it was a Rashomon moment for me. First I was convinced that the rescue was all due to the CIA operative. Then when I checked out the Canadian documentary, I realized that the real story is probably not as told in the movie.

The fact is that rarely do we get to be first-hand witnesses to events that interest or concern us. We only know what is revealed in the sources we happen to have stumbled upon. In most cases, we are not aware of the biases of those who tell the stories. Americans will tell a story that glorifies them, just as any other people. Giving a hearing to different versions of the story may help us understand what may have actually happened. But at the very least it helps us keep in mind that there’s more to any event than simply what’s recounted by one interested party.

History Lessons

We learn history in school. What we learn only later is that history is what the government wants us to know. The more important the event, the more it is likely that those who are in control would like us to know their version of what happened and why. We should be rationally sceptical of what we are told by those in power.

Most of what I learned about Indian history during my school years came from sources that had a definite bias. That history was what the government wanted Indians to believe. Some figures were exaggerated in importance to suit the governments’ agenda. Gandhi was the “Father of the Nation” and he got “independence” for India using his satyagraha. Nehru was the avuncular dear leader — Cha-cha Nehru — who was wise beyond belief. He was a great historian, a great economic planner, the builder of modern India.

I was quite aware that I knew very little history. Partly that was because I did not really have a deep interest in it and partly because it was taught only briefly and too poorly. What came as a surprise (and it should not have if I had bothered to think about it a bit) was that what little I had been taught was actually inaccurate. Not only did I not know history, but what I did know was in all probability wrong. In my naivete I had assumed that people would not generally lie about history. Now I am older and wiser. I know now that distortions, exaggerations, half-truths, outright lies and pure fabrications pack the history text books in Indian schools. They are written by the leftists and support the government agenda, the dominant narrative revolving around the great Mughals and their descendants such as Gandhi & Nehru.

Fortunately for some of us, them internets is helping us see through those lies. The story told by Argo was made less distorted by the documentary on YouTube. We need to continue to look for other points of view to correct the distortions that the government approved history has introduced into our collective psyche. No wonder the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino UPA would like to censor the internet. The internet will reveal the truths that the government does not want people to know.

~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~

Post Script: July 23rd 7 AM.

“The man said that them internets helps in figuring out distortions, did he?”

“Yes, he did. He also made the point that there are many sides to stories. I believe he dragged in something about Rashomon. Perhaps he was trying to make a point that one should not be too gullible. Consult many sources, suspect the motives of those who are an interested party in the matter.”

“Yeah, I got that impression too on reading the blog. Them internets help in giving different viewpoints. But did the man say that them internets has only the truth and nothing but the truth? Did he say that?”

“Ummmmmmm. No, I didn’t get that impression. Should I re-read the post? Just to make sure that he did not make the claim that them internets is a TRUTH MACHINE. I don’t see where the man claimed that one should not exercise judgement or not be skeptical when surfing them nets.”

“I read the post carefully. It says, TRUTH-SEEKING machine. It’s there in the last line and in the title as well. Perhaps he was hinting at the fact that it helps you seek the truth.”

“Yeah. It does not tell you the truth. It helps you seek truth. Besides, them internets is not the only thing that helps you seek out the truth. The man does not make that claim.”

“So tell me, why are there a couple of comments that appear retarded in the context of this post?”

“Don’t know. Perhaps people read what they want to read instead of reading what is written, perhaps.”

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=95822013-07-21T23:16:40Z2013-07-21T23:16:40ZContinue reading →]]>Shantanu Bhagwat has a post at his Reclaiming India blog at The Times of India website in which he states that Indians must not stand as neutral observers in the upcoming general elections because the UPA is “an existential threat to India” and therefore it must go. At the start of the post Shantanu recalls a recent conversation he had with Rajesh Jain. Rajesh made his point through a quote attributed to Dante. “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality”. Shantanu explains why he will not be neutral and is firmly committed to supporting Narendra Modi. Me too. Indeed, Shantanu quotes yours truly in his post. As you may know, I am not one to shy away from taking sides in the good fight.
Dante Aligheri (c. 1265 – 1321), a medieval Italian (coincidence? I think not) poet wrote Inferno c. 1317 in which he expressed the basic idea contained in the quote attributed to him. That quote is at best a paraphrase of what Dante wrote. It was one of John F Kennedy’s favorite quotes, as the JFK Presidential Library notes:

This supposed quotation is not actually in Dante’s work, but is based upon a similar one. In the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil, on their way to Hell, pass by a group of dead souls outside the entrance to Hell. These individuals, when alive, remained neutral at a time of great moral decision. Virgil explains to Dante that these souls cannot enter either Heaven or Hell because they did not choose one side or another. They are therefore worse than the greatest sinners in Hell because they are repugnant to both God and Satan alike, and have been left to mourn their fate as insignificant beings neither hailed nor cursed in life or death, endlessly travailing below Heaven but outside of Hell.

In short, take sides because you have an interest in the outcome. Another Italian (coincidence? Again, I think not), Nicolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) made a similar point in his most celebrated work The Prince:

A Prince is likewise esteemed who is a stanch friend and a thorough foe, that is to say, who without reserve openly declares for one against another, this being always a more advantageous course than to stand neutral. For supposing two of your powerful neighbours come to blows, it must either be that you have, or have not, reason to fear the one who comes off victorious. In either case it will always be well for you to declare yourself, and join in frankly with one side or other. For should you fail to do so you are certain, in the former of the cases put, to become the prey of the victor to the satisfaction and delight of the vanquished, and no reason or circumstance that you may plead will avail to shield or shelter you; for the victor dislikes doubtful friends, and such as will not help him at a pinch; and the vanquished will have nothing to say to you, since you would not share his fortunes sword in hand.

. . . And it will always happen that he who is not your friend will invite you to neutrality, while he who is your friend will call on you to declare yourself openly in arms. Irresolute Princes, to escape immediate danger, commonly follow the neutral path, in most instances to their destruction. But when you pronounce valiantly in favour of one side or other, if he to whom you give your adherence conquers, although he be powerful and you are at his mercy, still he is under obligations to you, and has become your friend; and none are so lost to shame as to destroy with manifest ingratitude, one who has helped them. Besides which, victories are never so complete that the victor can afford to disregard all considerations whatsoever, more especially considerations of justice. On the other hand, if he with whom you take part should lose, you will always be favourably regarded by him; while he can he will aid you, and you become his companion in a cause which may recover.[Source.]

In other words, you must take sides because otherwise you will end up as the object of derision from both sides of the conflict.

I have been a Modi supporter for nearly a decade and each passing year has only strengthened my approval of him. I believe that India needs a regime change and he is most capable of making that happen. I realize that the old order will not gracefully pass away but instead will mount a mighty battle against Modi. For India to have a future, we have to take sides and support Modi to the best of our abilities. We must because otherwise there is little hope for India.

Nehru was Gandhi’s blue-eyed boy and based solely on that dubious distinction, became the first prime minister of India. The sentiment expressed by that quote is consistent with who Nehru apparently was. Some have asked what the source of that quote is. It is from Wikiquote on Nehru. The reference to that quote leads to a 404 error. Apparently that page no longer exists on the Pioneer website. Perhaps one of these days we will figure out the source and its authenticity. But I would not be surprised if much of what Nehru or any of the celebrated Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan’s inconvenient declarations have been removed from the public records. We have to remember that Congress governments have carefully controlled what the public gets to know. India, like all third-rate countries like North Korea and others, suffers from government censorship and control of the media. That makes the national motto — Satyameva Jayate: Truth Alone Prevails — an ironic parody of reality.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=95462013-07-21T00:40:28Z2013-07-20T23:26:07ZContinue reading →]]> In a previous post, I had promised to tell a story if anyone wanted to hear it about how cognitive overload can be detrimental to persuasion. As it happens, Sambaran Mitra and Sridhar Rao (see the comments to the post “How to Tell a Big Lie: Assertion, Repetition and Contagion“), and others emailed me to tell the story. So here it is.
The year was the Summer of 1998, if I recall correctly. The occasion was a hearing. It was at the student cooperative housing society called USCA — University Student Cooperative Association — where I lived at that time as an economics graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. I have written a brief post about the USCA back in January 2004. Now it is time to tell you the story that helped me clearly understand one important lesson.

USCA

The USCA is a student-run and student-operated housing cooperative. The organisational structure included a small full-time paid professional staff, headed by a general manager, which was what you may call the “executive” branch of the institution. The students formed the “legislative” branch and that comprised of a “Board of Representatives” or more simply the “Board.” Each house had representatives on the Board, the numbers dependent on the size of the house. A small house like the Convent (20 residents, where I lived for a year) had only one “board rep” but a large house like Cloyne Court with its 150 residents where I lived for also a year had I believe five board reps. In all there were around 40 board reps from the 20 or so houses that comprised the housing co-op. We housed about 2,000 students in a dozen houses and three large apartment complexes. The annual operating budget was around $7 million.

We don’t need to go into the details but the USCA was like a miniature country which was “democratically” run. The Board members were elected by direct votes from each of the houses every academic year. These board reps met every week (in different houses by rotation) to discuss matters of importance. Motions were made, debated, and then voted upon. All meetings were conducted under Robert’s Rules of Order.

One of the features of living in this co-op was “workshift”. Every resident houses of the co-op had to work five hours a week on various tasks such as cooking, cleaning, housekeeping and maintenance. Being a board rep counted as full workshift. As it happened, I was elected board rep for the Convent, and after a term I was elected by the Board as the VP of Finance. After a couple of terms of being VP finance, I was elected president of the USCA for a term.

Wayne’s Case

Among the board’s duties was handling dispute resolution cases, which was done by a sub-committee of six board reps. The particular case of interest to us here involved a resident’s case against the office. All the details are fuzzy but the broad story was that the student (let’s call him Wayne) had been fined for some infraction of the rules and he was contesting the office’s decision.

The office presented their side of the story briefly. They pointed a few facts, made reference to some rule, and then quickly concluded their case. Wayne contested some of the sequence of events and contradicted the office’s interpretation. He went into a lengthy explanation of why the office’s interpretation of the rule was wrong and presented the facts in excruciating details of the case. Just keeping all the details in mind was a struggle.

Wayne is one of the smartest people I have ever met when it comes to mathematics. His maths PhD thesis was on algebraic geometry, a subject that very few people ever tackle. He can do complex mathematical manipulations in his head what others would struggle to do on paper. He is brilliant. And also a perfectionist nutcase, if there ever was one.

I felt that the office had misinterpreted the rule and Wayne was probably right. I would have given him the benefit of the doubt had I voted. But I only had a tie-breaking vote as I was presiding over the meeting, and there was no tie to break. The committee voted in favor of the office.

In the end, I think what went against Wayne was that he explained too much, gave too many details, made a complex argument and ended up confusing the jury. The office’s case was much easier to follow and the panel decided to vote for the side that they understood without much trouble.

Anyway, let me conclude the story. That was the first time that I met Wayne. Next term he was looking for someone to share a co-op apartment with and approached me. We ended up bidding for a nice two-bedroom apartment on the south-side of the campus. We were roommates for the next four years until we both finished our PhD degrees. After that, he bought a house in Berkeley which he has been renovating for all these years. A math PhD who is now an expert on how to build a house from the foundation up. He can put together a computer in one afternoon from parts, and he can put in a new bathroom in his house, replace the entire kitchen, refurbish the basement, etc — and take 10 years doing it. He had worked as a mathematician for a hedge fund while a grad student and had made enough that he does not plan to work for pay ever. We keep in touch.

Fenwick and Rochdale

The USCA apartment I shared with Wayne was in the complex called Fenwick, which was next to another complex called Rochdale. The full names are Fenwick Weavers’ Village and Rochdale Village. The Fenwick complex at Berkeley is named after “Fenwick Weavers’ Society” which is considered the world’s first cooperative formed in 1761 in England.

For many Fenwick is the first ‘proper’ co-operative in the world, beating Rochdale by 80 years. The self-employed weavers of this small town near Kilmarnock bought a sack of oatmeal and started selling it at a discount. A formal agreement was written and signed between the original 15 members, and soon the society was lending money and selling other goods, with a shop opening in 1769. eventually profits were shared among members. There was even a library and the ‘Fenwick parliament’, a place for villagers to debate issues. [Source.]

The Rochdale Principles are a set of ideals for the operation of cooperatives. They were first set out by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, United Kingdom, in 1844, and have formed the basis for the principles on which co-operatives around the world operate to this day. The implications of the Rochdale Principles are a focus of study in co-operative economics. The original Rochdale Principles were officially adopted by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in 1937 as the Rochdale Principles of Co-operation.

Lessons I Learned

It is hard for me to overestimate how much my living at the co-op affected my worldview and how much I learned about the real world. I think I have a deeper understanding of what democracy means. I understand why communism and socialism fail. I understand that the balance of power between the state and the citizenry fundamentally determines economic prosperity. I understand the importance of the rule of law, of a constitution and the need to shield the function of governance from arbitrary power exercised by those who control the system.

It is one thing to read a paper on the tragedy of commons; it is quite another thing to see it happening almost daily in the house.

Cloyne Court had 150 residents. We all shared a common kitchen and a common pantry. I estimate around 40 percent of the food that came into the pantry ended up in the garbage without passing through the usual route. In contrast, at the Convent, with only 20 residents, the amount of food wastage was practically negligible. Cloyne Court had the look of a disaster zone frequently but the Convent was almost as clean and orderly as a convent (which it used to be before the USCA bought that property.)

Over the years that I lived in the USCA, I saw how the “executive” kept on attempting to increase spending, and to pay for that, seek to raise “taxes” (which in our case was the rent.) I developed a healthy aversion and fear of the state and the government.

But it was not all bad. I am certain that thousands of students learned how to manage a fairly complex organization by participating in the operations of the co-op. The benefits of cooperation can only be fully comprehended by living in a cooperative. An enduring lesson must have been about participative governance and democracy. Decisions that impacted all concerned were democratically arrived at but circumscribed by rules. The importance of rules was hard to ignore. Even in what appears to be trivial (although actually not being trivial) such as running meetings, rules were involved. Every board meeting was attended by a large number of residents — not just the board members. They all became familiar with Robert’s Rules of Order. In time, I knew what it meant to “call the question,” “move the question,” etc.

Sometimes when I am in Berkeley, I drive by Fenwick apartments and I am overcome with nostalgia and gratitude that I had the opportunity to live and learn a bit about the world there.

Back during high school days, Jim Corbett was a favorite author. The other day I was going through my notebooks and came across this bit. I don’t recall which book it is from but I have read it so many times that I know this bit by heart. Read slowly and deliberately, it transports you to the Gir at night.

But there are quieter moments in Gir — when the village is silent and the wind searches across your face like blind fingers. When a full moon silvers the sleeping forest — and a voice in the night touches a chord in your heart and your companions who know will whisper, “That’s the blind singer of Sasan.” And the forest listens as a song drifts lyrically like a ribbon of smoke.

Perhaps it is from The Man Eaters of Kumaon. Published in 1944, it’s an excellent read.

This is the story of the sort of British imperialist in India who is seldom now remembered. Jim Corbett came of an undistinguished family who had lived in India for generations, and although British in his race, dress, speech and habits, simply was an Indian in his own country, as much as anyone of Indian descent can be British or American. He started work as a minor official of an Indian railway, but his greatest interest was in the wildlife of the northern Indian jungles, which he frequented alone since early childhood. He always claimed that for someone who knows enough not to give provocation, the jungle was extremely safe.

Man-eaters, however, are another thing entirely, and he always emphasised that even the man-eater, almost invariably prevented by injury or age from hunting his natural prey, is neither guilty nor cruel. But it learns its business, sometimes fearfully well. Corbett never apologised for enjoying shooting as a sport in his early years, but he eventually turned to hunt exclusively man-eaters, for the protection of the people to whom he dedicated one of his books: “My friends, the poor of India.”

To this task he brought consumate skill and knowledge. The easy ways of killing an animal rarely work with man-eaters, and Corbett frequently spent weeks, nights after night sitting out alone, after a man-eater which knew of his presence, and was just as interested in stalking him. Perhaps the majority of his man-eaters, in dense and rocky jungle, were killed at a range of feet rather than yards. There are no heroics in this extraordinarily brave man’s work. He admits his mistakes freely and with humour, and was often in a state of real, well-informed fear. His friends ranged from the highest in the government to the peasants he loved, and he brought them together in a way few have done. A constant theme is that the tiger is great-hearted gentleman, and doomed by the progress of civilisation, in ways that have nothing to do with hunting, unless something is done. The Jim Corbett National Park exists today because he wanted it so.

Jim Corbett would have been a great man if he had never written a word. But he writes extremely well, with humour and economy of language on a subject which would provoke many to hyperbole. The work is not slowed down by a meticulous attention to detail, and explaining the pros and cons of the decisions he made, which might one day save a reader’s life. Books on big-game hunting rank high among those of people who have seen and done, as well as theorised. But Jim Corbett’s are undoubtedly the finest I know.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=95102013-07-21T00:06:19Z2013-07-11T06:01:28ZContinue reading →]]>Those who wield great influence on humanity unfailingly understand some truth about the nature of human collectives. It could not be otherwise. They are able to hold power over the masses because they know — consciously or not — how to manipulate them.

Every individual is unique. Any and all of his mental and physical attributes may lie anywhere along the spectrum of human variations, not duplicated in its entirety in any other person. The individual person is idiosyncratic and unpredictable in his actions. But the masses behave entirely predictably. Humans are rational but only boundedly so. Psychologists who study group behavior have identified biases and systematic deviations from rational behavior. Those who rule the masses have necessarily to be experts in mass psychology.
One such truth about humans is that they are persuadable. The sheer size and influence of the advertising industry attests to that fact. People can be made to believe anything at all, including all sorts of obviously false notions and lies. What’s more fascinating is the phenomenon that is usually (perhaps mistakenly) associated with Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s closest aids and the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. It is the idea of the big lie, variously stated as:

If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Not just any old lie, it has to be a big enough lie. Repeat a big lie and you will be believed.

Goebbels of course was not alone in recognizing this feature of humans. Although a skilled practitioner of the art of propaganda and persuasion, he was merely using what others before him had also known. For instance, in his 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon (1841 – 1931) wrote that “to imbue the mind of a crowd with ideas and beliefs”, leaders have to use three clearly defined expedients: affirmation, repetition and contagion.”

Affirmation pure and simple, kept free of all reasoning and all proof, is one of the surest means of making an idea enter the mind of crowds. The conciser an affirmation is, the more destitute of every appearance of proof and demonstration, the more weight it carries. The religious books and the legal codes of all ages have always resorted to simple affirmation. Statesmen called upon to defend a political cause, and commercial men pushing the sale of their products by means of advertising are acquainted with the value of affirmation.

Affirmation, however, has no real influence unless it be constantly repeated, and so far as possible in the same terms. It was Napoleon, I believe, who said that there is only one figure in rhetoric of serious importance, namely, repetition. The thing affirmed comes by repetition to fix itself in the mind in such a way that it is accepted in the end as a demonstrated truth.

The influence of repetition on crowds is comprehensible when the power is seen which it exercises on the most enlightened minds. This power is due to the fact that the repeated statement is embedded in the long run in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in which the motives of our actions are forged. At the end of a certain time we have forgotten who is the author of the repeated assertion, and we finish by believing it. To this circumstance is due the astonishing power of advertisements. When we have read a hundred, a thousand, times that X’s chocolate is the best, we imagine we have heard it said in many quarters, and we end by acquiring the certitude that such is the fact. When we have read a thousand times that Y’s flour has cured the most illustrious persons of the most obstinate maladies, we are tempted at last to try it when suffering from an illness of a similar kind. If we always read in the same papers that A is an arrant scamp and B a most honest man we finish by being convinced that this is the truth, unless, indeed, we are given to reading another paper of the contrary opinion, in which the two qualifications are reversed. Affirmation and repetition are alone powerful enough to combat each other. [Link.][Emphasis added.]

It is very important to fully understand that crowds can be manipulated by simple means. Actually, only through simple means. The assertion has to be simple and should be presented without burdening it with proofs. Most importantly, you must not subject the crowd to what in modern parlance is called “cognitive overload.” The crowd will be turned off if you throw too much information at them. Demand that they think and you have lost the plot. The KISS principle — keep it simple, stupid — at play. (I have a story to tell which rather neatly illustrated the KISS idea to me. I will tell it upon request. Well, here it is since you asked: The Fenwick Weavers’ Village.)

Repetition is critical. “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over,” wrote Goebbels.

Back to Le Bon. About “contagion” he writes:

When an affirmation has been sufficiently repeated and there is unanimity in this repetition . . . what is called a current of opinion is formed and the powerful mechanism of contagion intervenes. Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes.

Microbes. Genes. And the analogue of genes in the mental space that Richard Dawkins so poetically named memes. See how the same idea occurs to different people at different times. That hints — if not attests — to the truth of the idea.

* * * * *

The Nehru-Gandhi-Maino Congress has been so spectacularly successful in holding on to power in India because they fundamentally understand how to manipulate the masses into believing big lies. They are the inheritors of Goebbels’ propaganda ministry. They know that first, they have to have assert without proof or reasoning, and second, they have to repeat the lie. They also know that it cannot be just a small lie. It has to be a preposterously big lie. A small lie one can dismiss because it is possible to discern the motive behind it. But a big lie gets through that filter because of the cognitive overload it demands to figure out the motive. In effect the mind says, “That has got to be the truth because no one can be so demented as to make that up out of whole cloth.”

The Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan led Congress has mastered manipulation and wield the weapon of the Big Lie superbly. There are two basic methods they use. First of course is the Le Bon-Goebbelsian “repetition of a few points”. The other is the control over the channels of mass communications. It is often repeated that India enjoys a free press. That is another of those lies that become the truth through assertion without proof and endless repetition.

Let’s talk about the Indian media: print, radio, television and internet. In theory, the government allows (except when it censors) the print media to print what it likes. In practice, however, the government exerts control over the print media through the (public) funds that it uses to advertise and promote its objectives. No newspaper can afford to actually oppose the government because if it did so, it would find itself financially insolvent and its owners would suddenly wake up to find themselves the objection of unwanted attention by government agencies. Full-page ads on the government’s great achievements, huge announcements on the birthdays of the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan members, etc., are the prizes that newspapers receive in exchange for the cooperation of editors.

To quote our favorite master of propaganda Herr Goebbels, “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”

Now about radio. That comes under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. A more truthful name would have been “Ministry of Propaganda”. In a largely illiterate country, print is not as effective radio. Anyone — literate or not — can listen and understand the spoken word. Therefore the government does not allow anyone to provide news and analysis on radio. You can play songs, carry on inane chatter and sell soap but discussing any serious idea is verboten.

Private television and radio channels require huge license fees. Which means that only those with very deep pockets can afford to have them, and also that unless they toe the government line, they can be shut down under some pretext or the other.

The internet is of course a growing threat and the government is doing all it can to throttle it. I think they are mostly successful in controlling the industry. Finally, the new kid on the block is the so-called social media. Thankfully, for the government, internet penetration is in the single-digit percentages and therefore social media will not make too much of a difference anytime soon. Of course, it is thanks only to the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan-led Congress that Indians are so desperately poor that internet penetration (like literacy) is low.

* * * * *

The big lie that the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan-led Congress is into relates to Shri Narendra Modi. I can relate to that because if I were in their shoes, I too would focus exclusively on the one person who poses the greatest existential threat to me. The asymmetry is evident: the opponents of the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino family don’t have a single target. They have multiple moving targets. Each day brings a new scam to light, every day there’s another report of gross public indecency. The opponents of the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino family are continually shifting their aim to different bits of the scene. The net effect is that there’s never enough concentrated fire to bring down the lynchpin — the central element that holds the entire mechanism together. The Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan, in contrast, has been forced to recognize that Modi is their nemesis. Modi is the one and the only one who poses an existential threat to them. Naturally therefore they focus on him. Their relentless hounding of Modi is evident and revealing.

If you are convinced (as I am) that the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan (and the UPA) are fundamentally to blame for India’s lack of development and for India’s slide into deeper poverty, and that Modi represents one desperate hope for India, then you will readily appreciate that Modi indeed stands for everything that the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan hates. Modi stands for a resurgent and powerful India; the NGM clan wants a poverty-stricken country so that they can continue to rule and loot India.

The techniques the NGM-clan employs is straight out of Le Bon’s book. The opposition (and I wonder if there is any real opposition other than Modi) either does not know or is in cahoots with the Congress busy looting the nation. I really don’t know and I would not want to conjecture there.

Modi’s goals are antithetical to the NGM-clan-led UPA. That rather parsimoniously explains why the big lie that their propaganda machine manufactures. Goebbels would be proud of Digvijaya Singh, Shashi Tharoor, Sagarika G, Rajdeep S & the rest of the unmentionables.

In conclusion, let me just recall that Goebbels, Hitler and the Nazi did have it good for a while. But eventually they ended up in a mess and the end was not pretty. They thought they were invincible and in their hubris they did what eventually doomed them. Let’s recall that all of history’s tyrants — Mussolini, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, take your pick — ended up reviled and hated by humanity. The more power they had when they were at the top, the more they did that earned them universal revulsion. I am absolutely convinced that the NGM family will be the most hated bunch in time to come. Today they rule the roost — but so did every ruthless murderous dictator.

Those mass murderers had a good time while it lasted — but not forever. We know what happened to the autocratic Indira and Sanjay (wasn’t he named Sanjiv to start off with?) and then the clueless Rajiv. Rajiv of course justified the murder of 4,000 innocent Sikhs by Congress goons, but met with a gruesome death. Wonder what’s in store for the others.

It’s all karma, neh?

]]>6Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94812013-07-04T21:44:15Z2013-07-04T18:06:17ZContinue reading →]]>“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Thus wrote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The 13 British colonies in North America had been at war with Britain for over a year by June 1776. At the urging of John Adams, between the 11th and 28th of June,Thomas Jefferson had drafted the “Declaration of Independence” which was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4h, 1776. Adams went on to became the 2nd president of the US and Jefferson the 3rd. Curiously, both died on the same day — Independence day, 4th of July, 1826.

The US is a large country today with a population of over 300 million. The population of the United States in 1776 was only 4 million — or about 0.33 percent of India’s population today (take a guess before highlighting the preceding blank space).

Well, today evening I am going to be up in the Los Altos Hills watching the Independence Day fireworks in the Silicon Valley. Perhaps I will take my camera and post some pictures tomorrow. Happy 4th of July!!

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94662013-06-27T22:29:23Z2013-06-27T22:11:52ZContinue reading →]]> “The Man Who Planted Trees” is one of those inspiring stories that I have re-read dozens of time and I still get goosebumps while reading it.
It’s the fictional story of Elzeard Bouffier, a man who planted so many trees over the years that it changed the local ecosystem. Here’s the first paragraph of Giono’s tale:

FOR A HUMAN CHARACTER to reveal truly exceptional qualities, one must have the good fortune to be able to observe its performance over many years. If this performance is devoid of all egoism, if its guiding motive is unparalleled generosity, if it is absolutely certain that there is no thought of recompense and that, in addition, it has left its visible mark upon the earth, then there can be no mistake.

There’s a real life Elzeard Bouffier in India. His name is Jadav Payeng.

A little more than 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav “Molai” Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India’s Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem. Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acres of jungle that Payeng planted — single-handedly.

I was introduced to the story when PBS broadcast an animated short film in 1989 (if I recall correctly.) I raved about it to friends but back in those days, you either saw it when it was broadcast or you were out of luck. Then a friend bought a DVD copy of the animator, Frédéric Back‘s work.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94532013-06-24T06:30:45Z2013-06-23T18:43:05ZContinue reading →]]>The good is oft interred with their bones. Shakespeare, that great observer of the world that fallible humans inhabit, was right on the mark. Being imperfect creatures trying to survive in this material world, we end up doing a mix of good and bad. Sometimes the consequences of the bad bits reverberate through the passages of time — and the good just fades away in comparison. Mr Advani could have withdrawn from that fate but it appears that now the time for that has passed.
Back in Nov 2011, I asked the question, “Is Advani merely senile or is he really intent on destroying the only chance India has of getting rid of UPA/Congress raj?” Then I wrote that Advani should exit gracefully. Here’s a bit:

Should a person’s ambition blind him to reality? Should the future of India be jeopardized — which it surely will if Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi and her brood continue the rape of the land — merely to satisfy the personal ambitions of an old man?

Yes, Advani is old. Too old to take on the burden of hauling a country out of a deep hole. India needs not just someone with a great CV but also someone who can put in the 18-hour days, work under relentless pressure, make very tough choices, face up to ruthless enemies at home and abroad, be brave to say it like it is, be a beacon of hope, deliver a vision that motivate Indians to do what has to be done, and more.

Advani is not being served well by this advisers and his family members if they are fueling his continued ambition to be the PM. History will judge him very unkindly if his attempt ultimately results in the continuance of Maino/UPA rule and India’s inevitable decline.

Advani is no doubt held in high regard by many people, both within and outside the Sangha Parivar. Indeed, I myself have immense respect for him. However that respect does not prevent me from seeing that he could be instrumental in Maino/UPA victory in the next general elections.

I beg of you, Mr Advani, for the sake of the nation, please go. I beg you in the name of all that is holy and good and decent, please go. Please go because we would like to remember you as a patriot who worked tirelessly for the country and did what is right for the country, and not as someone who sacrificed the country in the vain hope of being the PM for a few years.

Ambition makes fools of us all, young and old. They say that there’s no fool like an old fool. Adding ambition to old foolishness is a dangerous deal. If you are the religious kind, I suggest prayers.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94472013-06-21T19:06:25Z2013-06-21T19:06:25ZContinue reading →]]>First day of Summer is here as today is the Northern summer solstice. Here’s a video nicely explaining the solstice. (Of all places, from the Kurdistan Planetarium.) The description below the video is taken from YouTube.

The Summer Solstice occurs exactly when the Earth’s axial tilt is closest to the sun at its maximum of 23° 26′. Though the Summer Solstice is an instant in time, the term is also colloquially used like Midsummer to refer to the day on which it occurs. Except in the polar regions (where daylight is continuous for half of the year), the day on which the Summer Solstice occurs is the day of the year with the longest period of daylight. Thus the seasonal significance of the Summer Solstice is in the reversal of the gradual shortening of nights and lengthening of days. The summer solstice occurs in June in the Northern Hemisphere, in December in the Southern Hemisphere.

At the Tropic of Cancer (23°26′N) and all points to the north, and at the Tropic of Capricorn (23°26′S) and all points to the south, the sun reaches its highest position in the sky on the day of the Summer Solstice. However, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, the highest sun position does not occur at the Summer Solstice, since the sun reaches the zenith here and it does so at different times of the year depending on the latitude of the observer. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the Summer Solstice occurs some time between December 21 and December 22 each year in the Southern Hemisphere, and between June 20 and June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of sign of the fertility, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94322013-09-01T02:06:22Z2013-06-20T04:39:05ZContinue reading →]]>The Congress has been arguably extremely successful in maintaining its stranglehold on India despite — and perhaps because of — its evident failures of governance. At the time of India’s political independence from British rule, the Congress inherited a very poor country. Roughly speaking, around 80 percent of the 300 million Indians then, or 240 million, were desperately poor. After 66 years, today that number of the desperately poor in India has more than tripled to around 900 million. For much of that time, the Congress has dominated the political control of India at the center and therefore has dictated those central (and state) policies that are directly responsible for this abominable state of underdevelopment. The Congress’s inability to provide good policies is matched only by their ability to hang on to power. How they manage to do that is fascinating and instructive.The Magic Word: Gandhi

The first and perhaps the most critical factor that contributes to the Congress’s success is just one word: Gandhi. None of us can remember when we first heard about Gandhi, the man who is reportedly the “Father of the Nation.” All Indians imbibe the idea that Gandhi was responsible for India’s “independence” with their mother’s milk.

I use the scare quotes to signal that my understanding of independence differs most dramatically from what is generally understood by India’s independence. I have written about that on this site elsewhere. (Note to self: insert reference here.) Speaking of independence, here’s another pet peeve of mine. Why do Indians have to ape the West, especially the Americans, so slavishly? Hollywood/Bollywood is a trivial example. The most serious offense is aping the Americans in the matter of “father of the nation” nonsense.

The Americans refer to a group of people as “the Founding Fathers” — a large group who signed the declaration of independence, or framed the constitution, etc. Notable among them are such worthies as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. The Wiki says, “Warren G. Harding, then a Republican Senator from Ohio, coined the phrase “Founding Fathers” in his keynote address to the 1916 Republican National Convention. He used it several times thereafter, most prominently in his 1921 inaugural address as President of the United States.”

Anyway, I suppose someone somewhere first proclaimed Gandhi as the “Father of the Nation”. It seems that it could have been Subhas Bose in 1944 in a radio broadcast from abroad. It tickles me to note that Gandhi hated Bose’s guts (of which he apparently had plenty) and Bose calls him the “father of the nation.” In any case, the preeminent ignoramus Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, is reported to have declared at Gandhi’s assassination that “the father of the nation is dead.”

You may note that the Americans have “the Founding Fathers” and India has only “the Father of the Nation.” Clearly, you may argue, Indians didn’t ape the Americans in this case. I concede that point but I wish they had done so. I wish Indians would recognize that many people worked selflessly to free India from British control and they need to be praised and their contributions acknowledged widely.

Now here’s the point I am laboring to make: Gandhi is promoted as the FotN because it matches Indira’s and her descendants’ last name. Now you and I know that Indira Gandhi nee Nehru is not related to Mohandas Gandhi. But I bet you dollars to donuts that a certain percentage of people do not know that.

I generally conduct informal surveys when I can. I have asked a few dozen uneducated working class people from rural India this question: how is Indira Gandhi related to Mahatma Gandhi? About half of them guessed that she was his daughter. When informed that Jawaharlal Nehru was her father, they said that they don’t know the exact relationship but she was certainly related to Gandhi.

If I had the capacity to do so, I would conduct a real randomized sample survey of rural uneducated voters in India to figure out what percentage of them don’t know that today’s Gandhis are not related to the original Gandhi. But my conjecture is that the Congress honchos do know that a large segment of their core constituency (the illiterate poor) mistakenly believe that Mohandas Gandhi and the present-day Gandhis (the Antonia Maino-clan) are related. And they make use of that misunderstanding — and how!

Not willing to let things alone to chance, the Congress names every conceivable public welfare scheme, roads, ports, schools and other institutions with the name of a Gandhi. Around 4,000 of them so that even the most uninformed voter knows one thing for sure: the name Gandhi is the fountainhead of all that is great and good in the land.

That is why the Congress has to have as its supreme commander, their Dear Leader, a Gandhi. As long as they have a Gandhi — Indira, Sanjay, Rajiv, Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka, the Gandhi family dog, whatever — they are sure to get those votes.

It is a matter of branding. I call it the “McDonalds Effect.” In an unknown place, where one does not know the quality of the restaurants, the safe bet is to grab a quick bite at a McDonalds. There must be better eating joints around but you just don’t know. Given limited information and risk aversion, the prudent thing is to go with the familiar.

So the strategy for the Congress is simple and elegant. Keep the voters ill-informed. Easily achieved since most of their voters are illiterate. Then add “Gandhi” to everything. Daniel Kahneman calls it the “priming effect.” At the polling booth, driven by risk aversion and limited information, the voters choose the party that has a Gandhi face attached to it. Of course, they have to make sure that the face appears in every campaign billboard in every corner of the country.

Nobody really believes that Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi is the sharpest tool in the Congress shed. Among its second tier leaders, the Congress has more educated, more competent, more shrewd operators than Raul. I would venture to say that practically anyone who is not obviously retarded would be better than Raul — leave alone accomplished people such as Jairam Ramesh or Shashi Tharoor.

But the likes of Ramesh and Tharoor have to play second fiddle to Antonia and Raul because they use the Gandhi last name. Ramesh and Tharoor know that their lunch depends on how strenuously they promote the Gandhi name. At some level, I understand that they prostitute themselves for their personal gains. But at another level I am repelled by that idea and feel revolted that people sink to such levels for material gains. I love stuff as much as the next man but I draw the line somewhere and refuse to prostrate myself to others just so that I can have another million to my name.

Antonia is the Dear Leader not because of her accomplishments (which appear to elude those who attempt to investigate the matter) but because the voters have been primed to believe that Gandhi is magic. Not to put too fine a point on it, the trivially true fact is that ignorance is the biggest friend the Congress has. And they do their best to cultivate their friendship with ignorance.

And Fear

The greatest weapon in the Congress armory is ignorance. Strike that. The two greatest weapons in the Congress armory are ignorance and fear. Actually, among the greatest weapons in the Congress armory are ignorance, fear and endless repetition. (Cue the “Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition” skit by Monty Python.)

Aversion and attraction are polar opposites of basic human emotions. The Congress understands that viscerally and uses it with deadly effect. I use the word “deadly” advisedly since the consequence is literally deadly for millions of poor Indians.

The person whom the Congress most fears is Shri Narendra Modi. Why? Because only he spells the undoing of the Gandhi-Maino dynasty and by extension the Congress party. The Congress worthies know this and know it only too well. Many people mistakenly believe that the BJP is the Congress’s mortal enemy. Not so. It’s one man: Narendrabhai Modi who is enemy numero uno.

For over a decade, the more Modi has delivered, the greater has he become a threat to the Congress. The greater the threat, the more the opposition to him. In their fight against Modi, the Congress has enlisted every weapon they have. The main stream media is fully bought and paid for (with tax payers’ money.) Even Modi’s enemies within the BJP (they are legion but I will not name them here because I don’t want to insult your intelligence) are enlisted without the least hesitation in the fight against him.

Everyone who has an interest in the status quo is against Modi. Anyone who wants India to change tack and progress is looking for an alternative and recognizes that the best we have is Modi. Of course, Modi is not perfect. No mortal is. But he is the best we have got. I have been keenly observing Modi for nearly a decade and I am convinced that no one else in India has what it takes to bring about the change that India needs.

The change that India needs. That’s precisely the problem that the Congress sees. The distress that India has today is entirely due to the Congress. (Of course, there is a root cause which leads to the Congress as a consequence. I will have to put that off for a future post.) So the Congress has to go if India has to prosper. So India’s prosperity is antagonistic to the Congress: you can either have the Congress or you can have a prosperous India but not both.

For the head honchos in the Congress, the choice is clear: if for it to survive, India has to suffer, so be it. For me, for India’s prosperity, I will do what I can to give the Congress and its leaders a quick burial. I wish the BJP had the same goal as I have.

To me it appears that the BJP has the same goals as the Congress. The first bit is of course to gain power for the simple reason that being in power gives them the opportunity for material gains. The second gain is self-aggrandizement. Completely understandable to me because if I had the opportunity to be rich and powerful, I too would do what they are doing.

But enough of me. I want to figure out what they are doing for material gain. The Congress has the post-Godhra riot. So it does its best to pin the violence against Modi. No investigation has found him to be guilty in any sense but that does not stop the Congress. Repeat an assertion enough and it takes on the mantle of truth.

In the next bit (see link below for the followup post) I will explore the idea of how the Congress is a master in the game of manufacturing “truth” by repeated assertion and why Modi is their greatest threat. I will argue that the many faults of the Congress is actually a fortuitous shield and they use it all the time.

Repetition is a powerful device for persuasion. Successful religions use it all the time. One particular world religion uses it five times a day. One simple idea repeated five times a day by its adherents convinces them that it must be true even though there is no evidence for the truth of the assertion. The Congress understands that idea, the BJP does not. The Congress and the Islamists are natural allies for this reason — but not only for this reason, as I will argue later.

In the next bit I will also explain why focus matters. The short form is this: the Congress’s target is one single individual, while those opposed to the Congress have multiple targets. Paradoxically, the more scams the Congress perpetrates, the less the damage the Maino-Gandhi clan suffers. Like in a chess game, the sacrifice of a few pawns or rooks is no big loss if the end-game depends on whether the king survives.

]]>15Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94262013-06-19T17:40:13Z2013-06-19T17:36:59ZContinue reading →]]>Preeti Rathi was the victim of an acid attack on May 2nd at Bandra Station in Mumbai. After excruciating pain and suffering, she died on June 1st. I signed the justice for Preeti Rathi petition. Please consider adding your support. Thank you.

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), American abolitionist.

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Edward R Murrow (1908 – 1965), American journalist & broadcaster.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=94002015-01-25T03:39:59Z2013-06-12T01:02:21ZContinue reading →]]>Political parties are like firms in the marketplace. The same principles that drive the behavior of firms drive the behavior of political parties. They collude if they can, and gain from their collusion at the expense of the consumers.

Here I will outline my conjecture about the two major national political parties in India. If you are a supporter of either the Congress or the BJP, you may be disappointed by my analysis. Especially if you are a BJP supporter, you may wish to skip this post. BJP is complicit in Congress’s crimes.

In the following, I will lay out briefly how markets are structured (to take up where I left off in my previous post on the matter) and then reason analogically that the BJP and the Congress are not competing but rather they are colluding.Markets and Competition

The invention of the idea of market is an uber-invention: every other invention flows from it. How so? Recall that nearly all human activity can be categorized as production, consumption and exchange. Exchange takes place in markets. Exchange involves competition and the field upon which the great game of competition takes place is the market.

Competition is important because it gives rise to the improvements that go into everything useful. Of course, you can ask whether the use is overall beneficial or harmful. After all, intercontinental ballistic missiles also improve from competition. Let’s sidestep that question for the moment and narrow our focus on things that are evidently useful. The claim here is that all improvements regardless of the ends that they are put to arise from competition.

Firms compete in the marketplace. A specific example would be the competition between, say, consumer electronics manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung. They keep innovating and improving their products not because they are motivated by altruistic impulses but because they want greater market share. Absent that competition, we would not have the increasingly sophisticated devices we have come to expect them to bring to market regularly.

Apple tablets are good because of Samsung, and vice versa. They compete and the unintended consequence of that competition is evident in our hands. Same goes for every product category, hardware or software. Toyota cars are good because of Honda, and vice versa.

Competition between sellers picks the winners and weeds away the losers in the market. Any firm that falls behind in this race is mercilessly rejected by the consumers. Because the consumers are free to choose, the firms are forced to compete to be better than their competitors.

A company is only as good as its major competitor. You have to thank Samsung for Apple’s great tablets and thank Apple for Samsung’s great products.

Buyers’ and Sellers’ Markets

Market structure makes a difference in the outcome which is reflected in the prices, quantities and quality of the products and services produced by the firms in the market. In a competitive market many firms compete and the outcome is good for the buyers. It is a “buyers’ market” and buyers pick the winners. If the market is dominated by one monopoly supplier, it is a “sellers’ market”: the monopolist restricts quantity and is thus able to charge prices much higher than its cost of production. The consumers lose and the seller makes humongous profits.

A notable distinction between a monopoly firm and a firm in a competitive market is that the former has the ability to dictate the price and consequently make profits (economic profits, not just accounting profits), while the latter has no control over the price and is a “price-taker” and therefore makes zero economic profits (although it may make accounting profits.)

Monopolies sometimes exist due to technical reasons (called a “natural” monopoly, which we will not go into now) and sometimes they are legally imposed. Through laws, the government can establish a monopoly. Government mandated monopolies can be either in the public sector or the private sector. Either way, the effect on welfare is the same: poor quality, insufficient quantity and high prices.

One way to establish a private sector monopoly is to pay off the people in the government (politicians and bureaucrats) and make them grant a “legal” monopoly. The money to buy off the politicians is then recovered from the monopoly profits earned by the private sector firm.

A public sector monopoly gives those in government a more direct route to rip off the public. The politicians and bureaucrats directly enjoy the profits without having to go through the private sector. The bottom line is that by restricting competition in the market, super-normal profits are made and the people who are involved in that restriction of competition gain — while the consumers lose.

Restricting competition in the market is fun for those doing the restricting. Which is why in all Banana Republics, market competition is restricted by the government. Mind you, no one in government comes out and declares that “we are restricting competition in the market to rake in the moolah and screw you all.” No, they say, “We are doing this because this product is an essential good and that means the market cannot be depended upon to deliver it. So out of the goodness of our hearts, we are going to take charge of its production and distribute it equitably to all — rich and poor alike.”

Two Dominant Firms

There’s another market structure that is of interest here. You can have a few firms — as few as just two — that function very similarly to the two extremes of market structures: either a monopoly or a competitive market.

If you have two dominant firms in the market (a duopoly), the outcome (in terms of quantities and prices) can be very close to the competitive outcome; or the outcome can be what obtains from a monopoly. Let’s discuss the competitive market outcome.

Each of the dominant firms in the duopoly competes with the other, and in its goal to acquire market share, increases it quantity and decreases its price, and thus the outcome is very close to the competitive market outcome (where there are many firms in the market and the competition ends in dragging the price down close to the costs.)

Collusion

The other outcome is where the duopoly acts as a monopolist. That is obtained with the two firms collude and behave like a monopolist. Collusion among many firms is hard to maintain but between just two dominant firms is not as hard or not as rare.

Hence there are laws that seek to prevent collusion. For instance, in the US, there are laws against firms colluding. They are called “anti-trust” laws. Banana Republics don’t have those laws. Indeed they have laws that restrict competition in the market.

The basic idea is that two firms must not be able, through an agreement among themselves, to raise prices and restrict quantities and rip off the consumers. That is, they cannot enforce prices in the market by agreeing amongst themselves to maintain a certain price level.

Still, regardless of the laws, firms figure out ingenious ways to collude. What may appear to be great competition in the marketplace could be a disguised way of collusion. Remind me to discuss that one of these days. For now, let’s just baldly state that if the dominant firms in the market collude, it helps them make super-normal profits at the cost of the consumers.

Collusion Among Political Parties

You may ask what’s with all this about competition among firms in the marketplace have to do with political parties in India. The fact of the matter is that human nature is pretty rigid and human behavior is fairly predictable. If you know what motivates humans, you can guess how they will behave. The owners of firms do what it takes to make a profit and the leaders of political parties will do what it takes to maintain the status quo that gives them the chance to profit from their position. Simple. Not quantum mechanics.

Political parties are like firms in the marketplace. Thus the theory of firms quite parsimoniously explains the behavior of political parties. If you understand how firms behave, you can explain how political parties behave. Therefore I have been going on about competition and collusion. The same principles that drive the behavior of firms drive the behavior of political parties. They collude if they can, and gain from their collusion at the expense of the consumers.

Here’s what I have been leading up to all this while. The Indian National Congress (henceforth Congress) and the BJP are the two dominant “firms” in the Indian political market. The impression that most people have is that the Congress and the BJP compete in the political marketplace. If you accept that to be the true state of affairs, then it becomes hard to explain some generally observed facts.

The leaders of the BJP on numerous occasions behave rather solicitously towards the leaders of the Congress — especially the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino dynasty. The BJP leaders don’t appear to be too keen to prosecute evidently clear cases of gross corruption by the Congress. They don’t appear to care about the reckless waste of public funds by the Congress. In short, the BJP does not seem to be interested in safeguarding the public interest.

All this is puzzling if you start off with the assumption that the BJP is in competition with the Congress. Drop that assumption and instead assume that the BJP (more specifically the people who dictate the BJP’s policy) is colluding with the Congress, and it all starts to make sense. They are colluding and in effect acting as one would expect firms to behave in the marketplace that is characterized by two dominant colluding firms.

The most important feature of two firms dominating the marketplace is that, absent any constraining safeguard, they will collude. They will find a mutual accommodation that allows their owners to reap super-normal profits at the expense of their consumers.

If they were to really compete, it would lead to mutually assured destruction — the competitive market outcome where nobody makes super-normal profits and it is all so boring to be in business. So they reach an understanding that they will shadow-box for the sake of appearances but not really fight.

The leaders of the BJP accommodate the leaders of the Congress. When the BJP is in power, it does not aggressively pursue cases against the Congress; and as part of the mutual accommodation, the Congress when it is in power does the gentlemanly thing and does not expose the BJP leaders. Perhaps the Congress leaders have files on the BJP leaders. I don’t know if that is so but it appears that it must be the case because the BJP leaders don’t really seem to be particularly interested in exposing the Congress, and vice versa. I have no proof and am merely conjecturing as a disinterested observer.

In any case, from my point of view it appears that the BJP and the Congress leadership don’t rat on each other. I refer you to all the various Congress scams the BJP could have exposed but did not do for unknown reasons. Well, the reasons could be as simple as honor among thieves. Or in economics terms, collusion among firms.

Collusion, not Competition

I claim that the BJP and the Congress are colluding. Which means that they are not in competition. Another way to state that is to say that they are mostly indistinguishable.

Recall that in the case of firms, it is competition that drives innovation and performance. Apple is good because Samsung provides the necessary fire under its butt; and vice versa. They don’t accommodate each other. They fight tooth and nail for market share and dominance. If one slips up, the other will have the other’s lunch. Consistently mess up and the firm will be history.

Congress has been making major messes (to put it mildly) and still is in business. Why? Because the BJP does not provide it with any incentive to be any better. Ergo, it is because the BJP is bad that the Congress is bad. If the BJP had been good, the first scam by the Congress and it would have been history. But instead, we have scams by the dozens and yet the Congress does not die.

The Congress survives because the BJP lets it. The question we have to ask is what compels the BJP to collude with the Congress in the rape of the country. That is the point of this long exercise.

I believe that we can parsimoniously explain a whole set of facts — the dozens of multi-billion dollar Congress scams, the elevation of a half-wit as the future savior of the nation, the vicious campaign against Modi, the steady march down the road to serfdom, the pernicious division of the population into caste and religious groups, the encroachment of the government into the private lives of people — all can be explained by positing that the two political parties are colluding.

The Strange Case of Mr Modi

So then, what can we expect from the shadow boxing between the Congress and the BJP? It easily explains the case against Modi. Modi is the joker in the pack. He is a BJP party guy but really he is the party-pooper. He is the spoiler in the nice little game that the BJP leaders are playing with the leaders of the Congress. They want him to come and spoil the game as much as they want a hole in their heads. In other words, the Congress and the BJP have an interest in colluding to torpedo Modi.

Modi will end the cosy relationship between the BJP and the Congress.

So let’s talk about why the interests of the BJP and the Congress are aligned as far as Modi is concerned. Both don’t want that Modi takes control. The reason is simple. Modi has declared and demonstrated that he is neither interested in being bribed nor in allowing others to be bribed. So, as the BJP and Congress leaders would naturally ask, what’s the fun in being in power if there are no pecuniary benefits? Modi is simply persona non grata, as much to the BJP as the Congress.

I maintain that the idea of markets ranks amongst the greatest inventions of humankind, up there with the wheel, fire and zero. It is also among the most misunderstood and underappreciated of ideas. That’s unfortunate since the misunderstanding of the idea of markets has negative consequences, primary among them being missed opportunities for human welfare.
Because markets are ubiquitous, we fail to appreciate that they are an invention and do not exist anywhere else in nature other than in human societies. At some specific time in human history, a fairly recent one actually, that invention arose. As time went on, the idea spread across the world and found increasingly numerous applications. More and more human interactions started being mediated by markets.

Markets have become an indispensable institution of civilization. Indeed, any sufficiently advanced society can do without markets as much as it can do without fire, the wheel or the idea of zero: meaning not at all. You cannot have a technologically advanced society without the use of markets.

We all participate in markets all the time. It is worth extending our understanding of what the idea of markets is. Why do we need them, what precisely is their function, what happens when we forego their use, when do they fail, why do they fail, what mechanisms are there to address market failures — all of these questions are not just intellectually challenging but are important because they have real consequences. If society as a whole does not have a basic understanding of these matters, the choices that people collectively make can lead to poverty.

* * * * *

Exchange

At the broadest level of abstraction, humans engage in three activities: production, consumption and exchange. Exchange — another word for it is trade — happens in markets. When you go to work, you exchange your labor for stuff that you need to consume. Of course, the employer does not literally hand you food and clothing. Instead you get something that you can exchange for food and clothing: money.

We exchange stuff because we are not good at producing all the stuff we wish to consume. Furthermore, we are better at producing some things relative to others and to other things. So we exchange those things that we are better at producing for things that we want to consume with others who are better at producing them than we are.

When you buy something, you exchange money for the thing; when you sell something, the reverse process occurs. In any exchange or trade, there is a buyer and a seller. Buying and selling are, so to speak, two sides of the same coin.

A quick reminder is appropriate here: money facilitate exchanges. Absent the opportunity to exchange stuff — the real stuff that you produce and consume is called “wealth” — money is quite worthless. The distinction between money and wealth is important to keep in mind. Money is “nominal” while wealth is “real.” Conflating the two leads to all sorts of stupidity (and worse.) More about that later. We will use the word “money” sparingly and focus largely on the real stuff that we produce and consume.

* * * * *

Voluntary Exchange

In any trade (or exchange) undertaken voluntarily, both parties to the trade gain. You voluntarily engage in the trade because you must necessarily value the stuff you give less than you value the stuff that you receive. If I voluntarily exchange my apple for your orange in trade, I must value the orange more than I value the apple; and you value the apple more than the orange.

Therefore, in any voluntary trade both parties gain. Thus, all voluntary trades increase what we call “social welfare”, which is the sum of the private gains that each party to the trade gets. Markets enable voluntary trades and therefore lead to social welfare gains. Anything that enables markets is therefore social welfare enhancing and therefore economically good. Conversely, barriers to markets (and voluntary exchanges) are welfare reducing.

* * * * *

Third Parties

The world consists not just of the two parties that trade in a market. There are others who are not engaged in the trade — the third parties — who may be affected positively or negatively by the trade. What about them?

The effects on third parties are called “externalities” because these are external to the calculations that the two parties to the trade make. The seller and buyer of gasoline don’t take into account the pollution that the use of gasoline produces which others have to suffer. That’s a negative externality and it goes in reducing social welfare.

The presence of externalities, positive and negative, affect the optimum functioning of markets. It has important implications for public policy regarding markets. For now we will put them aside.

* * * * *

Competition in Nature

Every living organism competes. The competition is always with its own kind because only one’s own kind shares one’s environment and needs the same resources. There is no need to compete with others who don’t share the same environment.

From the individual’s point of view, it is never good to be in competition with others of its kind. It is forced to compete but it would prefer not to. Yet, an individual generally benefits from competitions which it is not engaged in. From a collective’s point of view, competition is good. This is counter-intuitive. How can something be individually “bad” but collectively “good”?

Competition is widespread in the natural living world. It is central to the mechanism of evolution through natural selection — which gives rise to the variety of species that exist in the world. Think of the competition that predators engage in.

At first glance it may appear that predators — say lions — compete with prey — say gazelles. But the truth is a little more complex. Lions compete with other lions, not gazelles. And gazelles compete with other gazelles. Both lions and gazelles have an interest in being fast compared to others of their kind. The slow lion (compared to other lions) starves and the slow gazelle (compared to other gazelles) gets eaten.

Now here’s the interesting bit. The slow lions starving “improves” the group of lions, just as the slow gazelles becoming lunch “improves” their group. There is competition among predator and prey, but only at the group level.

When the lions become faster as a group, the pressure is on the gazelles to become faster. They co-evolve. If lions become too few or disappear altogether, the pressure eases on the gazelles and consequently they slow down as a group. Fast lions arise from competition among lions. Fast gazelles arise from competition among gazelles. That’s intraspecies competition. Then there is interspecies competition, between lions and gazelles, which improves both species. Healthy lions guarantee healthy gazelles, and vice versa.

* * * * *
Competition in the Market

Buyers and sellers as groups occupy the two different sides of a market. Competition in a market, like competition in the natural world, occurs primarily within the groups, not between the groups. Sellers compete with each other, and buyers with other buyers. This point of view is essential to understand the dynamics of markets.

The primary conflict of interests is not between buyers as a group and sellers as a group. Each seller competes with other sellers, and each buyer competes with other buyers. This inevitably leads every seller to be as “good” to the buyers’ group as it possibly can to beat out the other sellers. In other words, as long as there is competition among sellers, it is good for buyers (individually and collectively.) We call this “competition in the market.”

There is another kind of competition — “competition for the market” — which is distinct from competition in the market. We will get to that distinction eventually.

If for whatever reasons competition in the market among sellers is prevented, buyers as a group lose. Restricting competition in the market is good for the sellers who have access to the market but it is bad for overall social welfare. Sellers can get together and collude to reduce competition among themselves. Collusion among sellers is good for the sellers but bad for buyers. There are laws to prevent and punish collusion.

The gold standard for markets (rarely achieved, if ever) is called the “perfectly competitive” market. Most markets are imperfectly competitive. But even with their imperfections, most markets serve the basic function of enabling trades — which as we noted before, if they are voluntary trades, they lead to social welfare gains.

Summary

The story so far is simple — and perhaps boring. It is boring because it appears to be going nowhere special. That’s just the way it is. The starting is boring because it’s just the beginning and the characters being introduced are not interesting yet. We need more intrigue, more cloak and dagger.

So we started with markets and noted that the idea is a recent invention. Markets are good because they enable voluntary trades. Voluntary trades are good because parties to the trade gain value. Then we noted that market participants compete. Competition appears to be good although not everyone playing that game is happy to be competing.

In the next bit, we will explore some applications of the idea of markets and competition. That’s where it gets seriously interesting. The domain that I will touch upon next is politics. Politics, like most other human endeavors, is played out in the marketplace. There are buyers and sellers, there is competition among the sellers and there is competition among the buyers. There are market imperfections in political markets, there is collusion and “market power”. Shortly we will figure out why India’s failure to develop has something to do with imperfect political markets. For that, we will have to consider political parties as firms (corporations) which are in the business of “selling” to voters.

This is a work in progress. So keep tuned in for the next bit tomorrow.

[Image at the top of the post, "Free as in free markets", borrowed without permission from Mimi and Eunice. Here one more -- free!!]

Advocating Free Markets

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=93482013-05-19T05:59:53Z2013-05-19T05:59:53ZA tweet of mine from May 14th:

“In facing your own mortality, what final message would you leave for future generations?” That question is from the 11th Hour series from Colorado Public Television which records living testaments from distinguished individuals delivering their lasting message to the world. Roger Ebert delivered this in 1994. He passed away just a month ago on April 4th, 2013.

We spend a great deal of time in mostly trivial pursuits on the web. But the web has an enormous wealth of content that could be of value to us. However we have to invest time and concentration to take what we are given so freely. This talk by Roger Ebert is worth the time.
For many years I have enjoyed Ebert’s movie reviews on public television. Although I sometimes disagreed with his verdict, I found his insightful criticism always helpful. I find myself nodding in agreement with his 11th Hour talk.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=92922013-11-02T17:59:24Z2013-05-04T02:13:50ZContinue reading →]]>The 3rd president of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan, must be the original “My Name is Khan.” In 1971 he instructed the Pakistani army to “Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands.” He was talking about his compatriots in the eastern half of Pakistan, present day Bangladesh.

Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations pointed out bluntly that not only are Islam’s borders bloody but that its innards are bloody as well. Pakistan is a fine illustration of that brutal truth. Anyway, in 1971 in accordance with General Yahya Khan’s orders, the Pakistani army proceeded with the job of killing three million and by some estimates, achieved that target. India helped in bringing the killing spree to a close but at an enormous price. The humanitarian costs were staggering. The Indian army suffered thousands of casualties; around 10 million refugees flooded into India (most of whom never returned). I don’t know if anyone can reliably estimate the economic costs. What bothers me is that too many people did not learn an important lesson even after this.
It is certain that most Indians don’t know much about India’s 1971 war with Pakistan. It happened too long ago and more than 70 percent of present-day Indians were born after that war. Things that happened before one’s birth have an unreality and don’t appear to matter much. It’s all history and we are not very good at history.

The numbers associated with the Pakistani army’s crackdown in East Pakistan, and the 9-month long war that ended with the secession of East Pakistan, are mind-numbingly horrifying: rape, torture, murder, displacement, death, disease. As you can imagine, the Hindus in East Pakistan suffered disproportionately. (Mercifully, my ancestors had escaped from East Bengal about a century ago.)

That war ended when the West Pakistani army surrendered to Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora, Joint Commander of Indian and Bangladesh Forces on Dec 16th, 1971. Wiki says–

Over 93,000 Pakistani troops surrendered to the Indian forces, making it the largest surrender since World War II. Bangladesh sought admission in the UN with most voting in its favour, but China vetoed this as Pakistan was its key ally. The United States, also a key ally of Pakistan, was one of the last nations to accord Bangladesh recognition. To ensure a smooth transition, in 1972 the Simla Agreement was signed between India and Pakistan. The treaty ensured that Pakistan recognised the independence of Bangladesh in exchange for the return of the Pakistani PoWs. India treated all the PoWs in strict accordance with the Geneva Convention, rule 1925. It released more than 93,000 Pakistani PoWs in five months. Further, as a gesture of goodwill, nearly 200 soldiers who were sought for war crimes by Bengalis were also pardoned by India. The accord also gave back more than 13,000 km2 (5,019 sq mi) of land that Indian troops had seized in West Pakistan during the war, though India retained a few strategic areas; …

The first of the present Gandhi dynasty, Mrs Indira Gandhi, was ruling India. I use the word ‘ruling’ advisedly. She decided that it was a great idea to give up a great bargaining chip — the 93,000 prisoners of war — and take nothing in return. War criminals, schriminals. Why bother trying them for war crimes! And what war crimes are we talking about anyway? The victims were largely kaffirs anyway. “The Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Pakistani military hatred,” TIME magazine reported in August 1971.

This is nothing new. Mohandas K Gandhi’s policy of turning the other cheek was applied. The soldiers who died on the battle field fighting the Pakistani army were not members of the Gandhi clan. So they don’t matter. For Mrs Gandhi, occupying the moral high ground was better than occupying some bit of land — never mind that soldiers laid down their lives in bitter battles for it.

The Bangladeshis repaid all the sacrifices that Indians made — the lives of soldiers, the economic hardship of feeding refugees — with enmity and aggression. The Bangladeshis don’t particularly dislike the Pakistanis these days. In fact, they provide Pakistani terrorists easy access across their border to India. The Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are brothers in arms, fighting a common enemy, the filthy idol-worshiping Hindu infidels. (Lots of redundancy in that last bit: infidels are filthy by definition; Hindus are infidels; Hindus are idol-worshipers by definition; Hindus are enemies by definition; etc.)

The trouble is that Indians don’t learn from their mistakes. They believe that being nice is a great big moral victory. Here’s a tweet that illustrates my point:

I don’t know what Maneckshaw thought of the matter of not trying war criminals but I find it hard to imagine that a soldier would allow war criminals to go unpunished.

Soldiers who fight other soldiers on battlefields should be treated with due respect and honorably. But soldiers who conduct a genocide of unarmed civilians are war criminals and must not be accorded the same treatment that good soldiers deserve. There’s no virtue but only shame in treating war criminals as if they were heroes defeated in war.

Justice and fairness have to be keystone virtues of a moral position. Justice and fairness demand that good deeds be rewarded and bad ones punished. The great moral teacher Confucius was asked what he thought of the precept, “Repay hatred with kindness.” Confucius replied, “Then how will you repay kindness? Repay hatred with justice and repay kindness with kindness.”

Pakistan keeps sending horribly tortured and mutilated bodies of Indian soldiers back to India. The mombattiwalas continue their celebration of peace with those monsters. While the jholawalas pontificate over their coffees and cigarettes, the poor soldiers die miserable deaths.

I have come to realize that the average Indian does not care too much for justice and fairness. If we did, we would not stand for the kind of treatment that Indian politicians and the enemies of India dish out to the people. Come to think of it, it is becoming hard to distinguish between the politicians and the enemies of India.

To have peace within the country and with our neighbors we have to be prepared to be ruthlessly just and fair. Repay hatred with justice and repay kindness with kindness. Anything else and we are complicit in the injustice that is sure to follow.

]]>10Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=92962013-05-03T16:40:11Z2013-05-03T16:40:11ZContinue reading →]]>I deleted two recently posted comments on this blog. My policy regarding comments is to allow all comments except those that are irrelevant or abusive. I don’t mind someone ranting in the comments but it has to be a relevant rant. If the post is about India and someone decides to rant on about the US, I will not allow it. Keeping on topic is important to me. But what if there’s something on your mind which you need to talk about? Here’s where you can express yourself. Write what you will here. Thanks.
]]>9Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=92572013-05-03T16:23:42Z2013-05-01T20:19:51ZContinue reading →]]>I have had the privilege of calling both India and the US home, and have had the opportunity of observing both from near as well as from afar. I am not an impartial observer because I am too emotionally invested in both countries. However precisely because I care for both countries that I bother to observe them so carefully and criticize them so relentlessly. The words of an old song express my feelings well: “I love you too much to ever start liking you // So don’t expect me to be your friend.” I feel pity, sorrow, anger, fear and loathing for what they have done (and are doing) to India.
India is often compared favorably with the US by noting that India too, like the US, is a democracy. I have concluded that the resemblance is only superficial and deep down, the countries are poles apart. I am convinced of this analytically of course but casual observation itself should be enough to persuade anyone of this. Just notice how different they are: one is rich, powerful, a global power; the other is desperately poor, powerless even against poorer smaller tinpot nations in its own neighborhood, a weakling in global affairs.

To account for the stark differences, there have to be fundamental distinctions between the US and India. At their very core, they have to be different. That’s worth examining for a bit.

The foremost difference I note relates to government. The people of both countries choose their government in elections — which is a defining feature of democracies. But in the one they choose who is to rule over the people, while in the other they choose who is to be entrusted with the administration of those collective tasks that require coordination at the local, state or national levels.

This fact is revealed in the very vocabulary we unconsciously use. In the US, they say the “Bush administration” or the “Clinton administration”; in India, it is the “Congress rule” or the “BJP rule.”

Administration and rule are different functions. In the former, the government is a means employed by the people to achieve goals that are essentially set by the people. In principal-agent terms, the people are the principal and the government is merely their agent. In this scheme, the people invest the government with certain limited powers to achieve specific goals. The government is like the driver who gets to drive the car but where the car is going is decided by the owner of the car. The driver is only nominally in charge of the car but the person really in control of the car isn’t the driver.

In contrast to the “administration” type of government, in India we have the “rule” type of government. The government rules over the people. The people are restricted by the government to only specific tasks. The people obey what the government orders. While it’s true that people choose the government but the choice they have is the choice of a slave about whom to serve, not the choice of being the master. The reason for this is not hard to fathom. It is historical.

India was a colony of the British. It was the “British Raj.” The British were the rulers then, the Indians were subjects. The British departed but the entire framework they had created to rule over the subjects was left intact. No changes were made because they were not required. They were not required because the objective of the government remained the same: to rule over the subjects (now euphemistically called ‘citizens’) through command and control. The new rulers were people of darker complexion than the previous ones but from an operational point of view, skin color has never made much of a difference. The executioner’s ax does it job regardless whether it is wielded by a white or a brown person.

Post 1947, India came under what I call “British Raj 2.0.” It is also known as the “license permit quota control raj.” Nehru boasted (and rightfully so) that he was the last Englishman to rule India. I am not making this up. I am not that imaginative.

We should note in passing that the Americans fought and won a war of independence from the British. The first thing they did was to dismantle the old structure and put in an entirely new structure of government. The government was entrusted with a limited set of tasks and given a limited amount of power. The people restrained the government. Read the Bill of Rights, as the first 10 amendments to the US constitution is called. The first five words of the First Amendment sets the tone: “Congress shall make no law …” Those words reveal who the owner is and who is the driver of the car.

Compare that to the First Amendment to the Indian Constitution. It places restrictions on citizens (or should I say subjects.) It was Nehru who brought in that amendment — as noted previously the last Englishman to rule India.

The idea that a government rules over the country is deeply ingrained in Indians. It is part of the worldview of almost all Indians. Take, for example, this tweet:

To transform India, the rulers have to change. But to change the rulers, voters have to change their minds. But…. twitter.com/rubenmasc/stat…

I don’t mean to pick on Utsav. I know him. He’s a decent, intelligent, nationalistic person dedicated to helping bring about positive change in India. But note how even he — a highly educated, worldly wise, global traveler — unconsciously refers to politicians as “the rulers” rather than people who serve the public’s interests.

Transforming India will have to begin by changing how we think about what the role of the government is, what the essential attribute of a free country is. At the risk of being labelled a lunatic, let me repeat once again that I don’t believe that India is free. Indians lack many things but the most important thing they lack is freedom.

If India truly ever becomes free, I am positive that the transformation of India will be as automatic as all development is. Development, whether it be of a person or a collective, cannot be wished. It is always a consequence of being free.

In the title of this post, I claimed that democracy is not all that India is. So I will get to that point now.

I have always had a particular fondness for vocabulary. That’s so because I like ideas and the only way to express ideas (and indeed to construct ideas in one’s head) is to know vocabulary. My one piece of advice I unfailingly give to kids is learn vocabulary. English is so powerful because it has a huge vocabulary. It just keeps acquiring words.

I suppose I learned the word “democracy” sometime during my middle-school days. Its meaning I must have learned during college days. It took many more years for me to understand the concept in its various instantiation across the world. All democracies are not created equal is the realization that I arrived at when I began to compare my two homelands.

A few years ago I learned the word “kakistocracy.” I immediately understood that India was a kakistocracy — rule by the least principled and the most corrupt. Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 50 years, I don’t have to go into the details of why that is true.

Here are some new words that I am slowly adding to my vocabulary. All the quoted definitions below are from the Wikipedia.

Aristocracy: “government by the best people.” India is definitely not an aristocracy.

Geniocracy: “Rule by the intelligent; a system of governance where creativity, innovation, intelligence and wisdom are required for those who wish to govern.” Not India.

Kratocracy: “Rule by the strong; a system of governance where those strong enough to seize power through physical force, social maneuvering or political cunning.” Could be true about India to some extent. Goonda raj, we call it.

Meritocracy: “Rule by the meritorious; a system of governance where groups are selected on the basis of people’s ability, knowledge in a given area, and contributions to society.” Nope, not India. Merit gets selected out.

Timocracy: “Rule by honor; a system of governance ruled by honorable citizens and property owners. Socrates defines a timocracy as a government ruled by people who love honor and are selected according to the degree of honor they hold in society … European-feudalism and post-Revolutionary America are historical examples of this type; …” No, India is not a timocracy.

Autocracy: “Rule by one individual, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for implicit threat). Autocrat needs servants while despot needs slaves.” India can be classified as an autocracy if you consider one lady and her blue-turbaned chaprasi (peon, servant).

Despotism: “Rule by a single entity with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group,[1] as in an oligarchy. The word despotism means to “rule in the fashion of a despot” and does not necessarily require a single, or individual, “despot”. Despot needs slaves while Autocrat needs servants.” Could be. Same reason as before.

Nepotocracy: “Rule by nephews; favoritism granted to relatives regardless of merit; a system of governance in which importance is given to the relatives of those already in power, like a nephew (where the word comes from). In such governments even if the relatives aren’t qualified they are given positions of authority just because they know someone who already has authority. ” I think we can call India a nepotocracy.

Kakistocracy: “Rule by the stupid; a system of governance where the worst or least-qualified citizens govern or dictate policies.” If Pappu gets to rule, the first bit of this definition will apply to India with renewed force.

Kleptocracy: “Rule by thieves; a system of governance where its officials and the ruling class in general pursue personal wealth and political power at the expense of the wider population. In strict terms kleptocracy is not a form of government but a characteristic of a government engaged in such behavior.” India has to the biggest kleptocracy the world has ever seen. The blue-turban has outdone himself.

Phobiocracy: “Rule by fear and hate; a system of governance where the basic organizing principles is the use of fear mongering to keep those being ruled in line…” Now this one for sure applied to India. The British started the divide the population and make each constituent element fear and hate the other. The UPA has perfected it.

So, there you have it. India is a democracy, but that’s not all that it is.

Be well, do good work and keep in touch.

= = = = = = = = = =

PS: Utsav, I will buy you a beer the next time you are in my neck of the woods for having partially motivated this post. Thanks.

]]>6Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=92422013-05-01T01:14:10Z2013-05-01T01:11:25ZContinue reading →]]>“It was 20 years ago today, Sgt Peppers taught the band to play . . .” Actually, I got carried away. What I really meant was that it was 20 years ago today, on April 30th 1993, that a bunch of researchers at CERN, a physics lab in Switzerland, decided that they would put some of the software they had created for sharing data in the public domain. That was the birth of the World Wide Web. And the first website, you ask? Here is a screen capture. (Click on the image to visit the world’s first website.

It helpfully explains in the introduction, “The World Wide Web, hereafter referred to as W3, is a global networked information system.”

It is wonderful that the organization, CERN, which operates the world’s largest particle accelerator is the birthplace of the amazing web. Shiva’s dance of creation and destruction — go read that post of mine from March 2012 in celebration.

Click on the link in the last line above for details on the world’s first web server.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=92112014-06-15T23:20:11Z2013-04-24T18:39:58ZContinue reading →]]> Money does grow on trees. Quite a bit of it is printed on stuff that is grown — wood cellulose & cotton. But money is not wealth. It is easy to confuse money with wealth but they are not the same. Governments create fiat money but that does not mean that governments create wealth. People through their effort create wealth. The government merely takes some of that wealth and uses it for various purposes, only some of which are defensible and some are not.

Today I read that the Bengal government is going to spend Rs 500 crores to compensate the victims of a chit-fund scam. The chit-fund scam is a crime but I believe it is also criminal to use public money to compensate the victims of fraud. I have argued against the use of public funds even in cases involving victims of accidents and crimes such as rape. I wrote the following for Quartz (March 13th, 2013).Why the Indian government shouldn’t have given a rape victim’s family $90,000 in taxpayer money

Public tragedies are a certainty in a world of more than 7 billion people: suicide bombs, shooting massacres, mass transportation accidents. We accept them as we do the weather, even though mayhem is often caused deliberately or through incompetence.

We vicariously feel the pain and want to help and share in the loss, which is why people rally so much in the aftermath of catastrophe. This often involves some compensation from public funds handed out by some public authority.

Within three months of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the US, $7 billion of federal funds was distributed as compensation. On average, the injured received $400,000 and the families of those killed received $2 million. In addition to the government funds, $2.7 billion in private charitable contributions were received.

But sometimes, horrific events involve far fewer people and still prompt an outpouring—such as the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year old woman in New Delhi in December. Sexual assaults are a commonplace occurrence in that city, but this one captivated the globe. The victim posthumously received the “International Woman of Courage Award” from US Secretary of State John Kerry last week.

Meanwhile, the victim’s family has received considerable compensation (by the standards of a poor country like India) from both public and private parties. State governments in India gave around $90,000. Private contributions also came in, including $3,000 from Yuvraj Singh, an Indian cricket player.

How we deal publicly and privately with victims and their families deserves serious attention by policymakers and the civil society. Our response should be rational rather than idiosyncratic to these random but unfortunately increasingly common events. We have to grapple with hard questions that have public policy implications. For instance, should governments be handing out compensations out of public funds?

At first, the answer may appear to be a self-evident yes. But on closer examination it appears problematic. We have to remember that not all victims get public compensation. Some get nothing while others get a lot. Who decides and by which criteria who is deserving of compensation? Remember, governments are people too. So why should some people decide what others are deserving of? After all, the money being doled out is taxpayers’ money given out by a third party: the officials of governments.

There’s another problem, especially in the case of a so-called “developing” country like India. Many public tragedies are partly the result of government incompetence, negligence and, in many cases, sins of not just government omission but actual commission. Railway accidents in which innocent people lose life and limb are frequent in India, often the result of poor management and corruption. After each of these, the government routinely hands out what it calls “ex-gratia” payments to pacify the victims and to give the general impression to be doing something.

So also is the case of the frequent terrorist bombings in India. The usual response from the central and state governments is formulaic, by now: First a condemnation of the “cowardly act”, then a stern statement that the criminals will be brought to justice soon (they almost never are), and finally, the announcement of compensation from the public till.

Perhaps the public is not aware the government is buying the public’s silence with the public’s money. In effect, the people in government cover up their own ineptitude by stealing from the taxpayers. That’s adding insult to injury. This problem is certainly not limited to developing countries. Even in rich countries with relatively clean and efficient governments, policymakers feel the pressure to appear to do something to demonstrate their compassion towards the victims.

Some people recognize the problem. Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who administered the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund said, “Bad things happen to good people every day in this country and it’s not part of our heritage for the taxpayer to be an insurer. To give these people, on average, $2 million tax free flies in the face of American history.” It negates the civilized principle of equal treatment before the law.

I see it as a basic principal-agent problem. The government is the agent of the citizens who are the principals. Expediency rather than rational considerations drive a wedge between the agents’ actions and the objectives of the principal.

There is a way out of this problem: Essentially, citizens must directly be in charge of deciding how much compensation is just for victims of tragedies. Each one of us individually has to be the final arbiter of what each of us owes to the victims, our fellow beings.

Imagine, instead, if your neighbors were in charge of deciding which charities you should support and with how much. You would be justifiably outraged and resist the usurpation of your right to your property. It is no different when the people in government decide who gets compensation and by how much following a public tragedy.

Instead, each of us must be free to decide how much to give and to whom. The proper response by the public to public tragedies has to be one of compassion expressed through private charity. We must look within and have the freedom to decide who needs our help and to what extent. In this age of instant and easy communication, it is quite feasible for people to contribute whatever they wish to any cause they find deserving.

In other words, we as individual citizens must retain our independence and must not delegate our responsibility towards our fellow citizens to agents, the people in government.

But what if people don’t contribute? The objection may arise and is a fair one. There is no virtue in charity if it is coerced by others—not even if those who are doing the coercing are elected government officials. If government officials feel very strongly about compensating the victims, they are equally free to dig into their own (often considerably deep) pockets and give. But this does not happen. It is always other people’s money that government officials are so ready to distribute and seek approval.

The public is rightly outraged at the perpetrators of these crimes against the innocent. It should be equally outraged at the government’s action that inevitably follows: the theft from the public to cover up what is too often the government’s failure to prevent those crimes in the first place. It is both unethical and immoral. It should be vociferously condemned and strenuously resisted at every instance everywhere.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=91952013-04-24T15:17:44Z2013-04-24T07:17:17ZContinue reading →]]> Mahavir Jayanti namaskar to all sentient beings. According to Jain tradition, Vardhamana Mahavira (599-527 BCE) was the 24th (and the last) tirthankara. “In Jainism, a Tīrthaṅkara is a human being who helps in achieving liberation and enlightenment as an “Arihant” by destroying their soul-constraining karmas, became a role-model and leader for those seeking spiritual guidance.” (Wiki.)
Let’s recall the Namaskar Mantra, which is “a gesture of deep respect towards beings Jains believe are more spiritually advanced and to remind followers of the Jain religion of their ultimate goal of nirvana or moksa.”

I bow to the arihants
I bow to the siddhas
I bow to the acharyas
I bow to the teachers
I bow to all sadhus
This five-fold bow destroys all sins and obstacles
And of all auspicious mantras, is the first and foremost one.

Among the Indic religions — Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism — Jainism is the most life-affirming. It categorically teaches that one should not harm any living being. Killing is definitely out. If everyone were to follow that principle, there would be no terrorism, leave alone organized wars.

Not that there is much to be gained by comparing religions, but if you must, Jainism is one end of the spectrum that extends from the benign to the malignant. Sam Harris compared Christianity’s Ten Commandments with Mahavira’s teachings in his book Letter to a Christian Nation thus:

If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: “Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.” Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible.

I admit that I take enormous pride that I was born in the same land that gave birth to Jainism.

I bow in deep reverence to Bhagawan Mahavir and all other Tirthankaras.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=91812013-04-23T23:44:51Z2013-04-23T23:42:32ZContinue reading →]]> India is not doomed to be poor due to factors outside its control. Yet India is desperately, depressingly, chronically, and acutely poor. Why is that so and what is missing? I explore this question in this piece which is part 2 of a series I am writing for NitiCentral.com. Part 1 was “All Men are Created Equal but Nations are Not.”India Suffers from Bad Governance

Leo Tolstoy’s book Anna Karenina opens with the line, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That observation about failed families, which has since been generalized as the “Anna Karenina principle,” also appears to apply to poor countries: countries are poor in their own unique ways.

There are multiple causes in any specific instance of the poverty of nations. They differ in the particulars but some generalizations are valid. For instance, the causes of poverty among small countries generally differ from that of large countries. Small countries are at the mercy of forces that are outside their control. Unlike large countries, they are easier to dominate militarily or exploit economically. Landlocked countries, which are likely to be small, have a harder time in the global economic game as opposed to countries with easy access to world trade.

Countries often suffer poverty for surprising reasons. Contrary to what one would expect, being richly endowed with mineral resources can actually be a curse rather than a blessing for a country. Intense and protracted struggle for capturing those riches can lead to widespread poverty instead of prosperity. Still others may have the disadvantage of geography. Tropical climates and their associated diseases are a burden while temperate climates confer a distinct advantage.

Of course, all small countries are not uniformly poor. Indeed some of them are extremely rich. It is useful to underline the fact that the prosperity or poverty of small countries arise from causes that are often enough outside their control. Large countries, in sharp contradistinction, are rich or poor for reasons that are entirely their own choosing.

Let’s focus on India, a very large country. As mentioned in the previous column in this space (“All Men are Created Equal but Nations are Not”), factors that could lead to persistent poverty are missing in India’s case. India is not starved of natural resources; its people are not lazy and stupid; invaders don’t repeatedly strip India of its wealth; massive periodic calamities do not level everything in sight; death and disease do not plague the land; it is not bereft of history, of culture or a deep civilization; constant civil strife between warring factions does not foreclose the possibility of any economic activity, and so on.

In other words, India is not doomed to be poor due to factors outside its control. Yet India is desperately, depressingly, chronically, and acutely poor. Why is that so and what is missing?

Before moving ahead, I should pause to say that every time I have made that depressing observation about India’s poverty, some people have vehemently objected and said that India is not a poor country at all. Clearly their evaluation of India differs from mine. I could point to depressing statistics but I will avoid doing that here. You either know it or you don’t. If you don’t, I don’t wish to go into them here. I will assume that it is there for the record.

That’s the bad news; and now for the good news. My fundamental argument is that India’s poverty is entirely man-made, self-inflicted and avoidable. The good news therefore is that India’s poverty is not irredeemable and unalterable. India can achieve its potential and become as prosperous as is possible for a large country with the natural and human capital it has at its disposal.

The primary cause of India’s persistent poverty is poor governance. Every other factor shrinks into insignificance when compared to poor governance as the causative agent for poverty of a large country like India. Even if all other factors of prosperity are available in plenty, the lack of good governance is sufficient to doom a country into grinding poverty.

Governance is what governments do. Governments are not accidents of nature. They are artifacts that have to be consciously and deliberately constructed. They come in various kinds: authoritarian, democratic, socialist, communist, et cetera. But they have one thing in common. Regardless of the type, if they fail to provide good governance, the country suffers.

So here’s a simple heuristic to figure out if you have good governance: if a large country like India is suffering, you don’t have good governance. You don’t have to be an expert on governance to know that if all other factors are quite fine, by a process of elimination you know that it must be bad governance that is root of all the misery.

Another simple heuristic for us is that a large government is more likely to fail to provide good governance. In the case of governments, small is not just beautiful, it is essential. If the government is attempting to do too many things, its primary failure will be in providing good governance. Why this is so can be traced to the fact that government comprises of people – just like you and me. People have their motivations and objectives. We are self-seeking people with bounded rationality and imperfect information. If we attempt to do too many things, the things that we should be doing get inadequate attention, and we end up doing things we should not be doing.

What is the most essential role of the government? It is to protect the rights and liberties of individual. Note it is not there to grant rights and liberties but rather to protect those rights and liberties that individuals have ab initio. Also note that the proper object of attention here is the individual. The life, liberty and property of an individual must be protected by the government from other individuals and also from the people who are in government.

If the government fails to perform that essential function, and instead does what it has absolutely no competency in, then you end up with poor governance and an impoverished society. India is a shining example of that failure.

There are endless examples of areas where the government interferes and does things that are unnecessary and wasteful. Let’s take just one example: running a commercial airline. There is absolutely no reason for the government to do so. It loses huge amounts of taxpayers’ money. The performance is abysmal and an embarrassment.

But of course there is a reason why the people in government want to have a government airline: it is their own private airlines that they get to play with while the poor people – people who will never see the insides of a plane – pay for it. A private airline that lost as much money as the government airline does would have been eliminated by the market. But the government is not subject to the discipline of the market. Or more accurately, the people in government are not subject to market discipline and therefore their fondness for the government encroaching into areas that is the natural preserve of the private sector.

The most pernicious effect of big government is that it breeds public corruption. Corruption is always bad but in the private sector, market discipline weeds them out. But public corruption – the kind only the people in government specialize in – has a side-effect that is hard to miss: it leads to bad governance.

So in summary, big government leads to corruption. Corruption leads to bad governance. Bad governance gives rise to mass poverty. Each of these links is worth examining, and which I will attempt to do in future pieces.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=91752013-04-23T23:45:54Z2013-04-23T23:29:02ZContinue reading →]]> Why are nations unequal? Apparently a simple question but hard to answer. I am writing a set of columns on that topic with reference to India. Here’s part 1. A slightly different version of this appeared on NitiCentral.com earlier this month.All Men are Created Equal but Nations are Not

Written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence asserts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, . . .” The truth of that claim is by no means self-evident if one were to note that every individual is unique in his or her endowments. Equality is the last thing you will observe in any interpersonal comparison along any dimension, physical or mental.

But if you were to shift your focus from the individual to any sufficiently large collective, the assertion that all people are created equal is more tenable. No people are intrinsically superior or inferior compared to other groups in any significant way. Random draws that we all are from the same human gene pool, the averages even out the individual differences and every large collective has the same innate potential as any other.

Europeans, for example, are not as a collective more intelligent (whatever that means) than say Asians. The innate intelligence of individuals in both groups will be distributed as normal (Gaussian) curves with essentially the same mean, median and mode. We can easily estimate how many people in any collective will be born geniuses and how many morons, and find that there are no systematic deviations in any population. All populations are created equal – even though all populations don’t end up equal in any sense of that word. That’s a fact we have to admit and deal with. Potentially they are all the same but the outcome is distinctly unequal.

Potential is one thing but the expression of that potential is quite another. Nature provides the raw material but nurture acts on the potential and reveals the actual. How much prosperity or poverty a person enjoys over a life time is almost entirely dependent on another random draw: one’s place of birth. All countries are not created equal and one’s life trajectory is constrained by the country of one’s birth.

Which brings up the question that has engaged economists for ages: why are some countries rich and others poor? Adam Smith, the great granddaddy of modern economics pondered that question and addressed it in his magnum opus “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” which was published in 1776, incidentally the same year as the work cited above, the United States Declaration of Independence.

Smith was a moral philosopher and was interested in asking questions that bear upon human action and human welfare. What is the source of wealth? What can be done about poverty? Those are persistent questions that infect the mind. If you start thinking about them, it is hard to stop. Why are some nations poor while others rich? The particular variant of that general question that fascinates me because I am an Indian is why is India poor?

Looking for single causes of complex questions such as that is futile. There are too many variable with complicated interdependencies and circular causations that it is impossible to arrive at a simple, definitive answer. There are no ultimate causes, only intermediate ones. The best we can do is to note some of the causal dependencies and know that our answers will always be qualified and conditional.

One possible reason why a country is poor is that it lacks natural resources. Absent minerals that are economically valuable and required for sustaining economic activities, it is poor. Perhaps it is a desert with nothing of any value. In other words it is natural resource starved and therefore poor.

Another reason could be that even though it is rich in resources, it is continually being invaded by outsiders who strip it all of its assets and therefore it is poor. We would say it is poor because regardless of what it produces, it is being systematically robbed by invaders.

Still another reason could be that there is civil strife. Internal conflicts between different groups ruin any chances of the sustained growth of wealth. Civil wars, for example, bleed the country internally and people cannot produce anything while hiding to stay alive from continued conflict.

Perhaps a region or a country is neither poorly endowed or is not being robbed by external aggression or facing civil are but it is the victim of natural disasters. From time to time, huge natural calamities are visited upon that land and therefore it is poor. Earthquakes perhaps destroy all that the people have built, or maybe huge volcanic eruptions lay waste all that is created. Perhaps drought or floods engulf the region.

Spared natural disasters, perhaps the people are systematically stupid that they are unable to create wealth that is required for a decent life. They don’t have the human resources to create wealth. Lacking a good civilization, they are embroiled in domestic disputes that make it impossible to sustain a good society.

India’s evident poverty in modern times cannot be due to any of those reasons. Nature is not unkind to it, nor is it subject to periodic disasters. Though in the past, India has attracted unwelcome foreigners, it has not been invaded for at least a century. It is not being systematically invaded by foreign forces. There have been internal conflicts but nothing as devastating that can cause it to be impoverished.

Indians are not stupid. They are as talented as any other people on earth. Indians abroad have done quite well. As immigrants they have prospered more than their compatriots in India. One can argue that people who migrate are generally more enterprising and risk-taking, and therefore are more likely to succeed. That is true but still that fact goes to show that Indians as a people are not exceptionally stupid.

India has a deep history that goes back millennia. Its people are as talented as any other. So what can possibly account for India’s failure to prosper? We must address this question if we have to figure out how to get out of the doldrums that India is in.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=91432013-04-22T23:05:43Z2013-04-22T22:45:29ZContinue reading →]]> The first lesson of development economics is that economic policies matter. Even if a country has everything going for it, lack of good policies condemn it to poverty. So it is easy to believe that if only good policies were known to those in power, economic development would necessarily follow. My good friend, the globe-trotting adventurer and consultant to capitalists, Utsav Mitra, brought that lesson to mind in a recent twitter exchange on my timeline. As a student of development, I have written a bit over the years on the matter and Utsav refers to it in a tweet which is embedded below.

@atanudey Agree. If just the 800 odd Parliamentarians and 5000 odd MLAs read your works, India will transform in a decade. @agentsaffron

I responded to Utsav’s generous compliment with a flat contradiction. I said he was wrong. Here’s why.

Economic prosperity is a consequence of good economic policies. It is a matter of choice, and if chosen wisely, the outcome is predictably obtained. It is something akin to good health. Generally speaking, if you have reasonable nutrition, adequate exercise, avoid the bad stuff, have sufficient rest, don’t suffer chronic stress, and are not burdened with inherited diseases, you are likely to be healthy. For most of us not born in dire poverty or living in a state of war, good health is a matter of choice. To be more precise, it is a matter of informed choice.

Maybe in the ancient times, the masses were ignorant of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle or were incapable of living that life. But things have improved. Today, most of us know what we need to do to enjoy good health. Yet merely knowing is not sufficient. The guidelines for healthy living are simple enough but following them is another matter altogether. That depends on our motivation. Motivation arises from our objectives. Our objectives determine our actions.

Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. What matters is the objective. If your objective is to be healthy, then it is almost a trivial matter (in today’s age of abundant information) to find out what you should be doing. Then it is up to you if you want to do it or not. In short, for most of us, we could be healthy if we want to be. If we are unhealthy, most likely it is not because of our ignorance but rather our objective and the resulting motivation.

Getting back to economic prosperity, India’s lack of prosperity is a matter of choice. More specifically, it is the result of choices made by the policymakers — the politicians and bureaucrats who determine economic policies. These choices derive from their objectives. Do they know what are good policies? Yes because good policies are known. It is not as if nobody knows what the necessary conditions are for development. Thousands of very smart people have shed copious amounts of blood, sweat and tears over long years in the empirical and analytical investigation of the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Luckily for us, the results are easily available to anyone who is interested in knowing what has been discovered.

Not just that, the prescriptions of the worldly philosophers — including mine — are not complicated either. The broad outlines of what causes and what hinders economic progress is easy for anyone with even average intelligence to comprehend and appreciate, provided of course that the person really wants to know. Let me repeat that: if you are interested in knowing what is necessary for prosperity, you can easily find out with only a little bit of effort and comprehend it with a little more effort.

So it is hard to argue that good policies are not chosen because the policymakers don’t know about them. Even if they did not know, it is easy enough to become informed. So why don’t they choose good policies? That part of the story is also simple: because economic prosperity of the nation is not their objective. They can choose to adopt policies that promote prosperity — but they don’t. Through their choices they reveal that they prefer alternate policies, policies that don’t lead to prosperity. Their choice reveals their preference; their choices indicate that their objectives are different from the objective of economic development.

That brings me to the second lesson I have learned about development: the objectives of the policymakers matter in the choice of economic policies.

If the policymaker wants his own economic welfare, he chooses say Policy Set#1, and if he wants the economic welfare of the country, he chooses Policy Set#2. It is possible that Set#1 and Set#2 are not mutually exclusive, as there may be some overlap. But the disjoint elements of the two sets probably matter more than the common elements. Just to take an example, let’s consider the policy related to economic freedom.

Economic freedom belongs to Set#2 (good for the economy) as it leads to economic prosperity. Why doesn’t economic freedom belong to Set#1 (good for the policymaker)? Because under that policy, the policymaker has little or no control over economic activity and therefore is unable to enrich himself.

Government ownership of businesses and industries is a policy that belongs to Set#1. It helps the policymaker to reap the benefits of power. That policy does not belong to Set#2 since it does not benefit the economy.

The government owned Air India is an instance of the government ownership of a business that should rightfully be in the private sector. It costs the country billions (losses that are paid for by all the people) and the benefits accrue to the politicians: they get to use it as their own private airline to enjoy.

Now back to Utsav’s tweet. His sentiments are excellent. He wants Indian politicians to read my writing (like the book “Transforming India“, I suppose) so that they will know what needs to be done. But as I have argued, it is not the not knowing that is the problem. If you know what you want to get done, you can always find out the how. If the horses are not thirsty, even dragging them to the water will do no good.

This is not a counsel of despair. I think there’s hope, naturally since otherwise I would not be doing this. The fact is that it is not that the policymakers don’t know. They can find out the answers any day of the week since there are smart economists galore. The problem is that the general population does not know the basics of good economic policies. That’s the great challenge we face.

People need to know because if they did know, the policymakers would know that they cannot fool the public any more of their self-serving policies. That would bring about the conditions for the policymakers to choose good policies.

That’s the third lesson of development economics: the public determines what policies the politicians choose.

Alright, time to get down to some serious work. The weekend is here and I have places to go, people to meet. And of course I have to get back to reading and writing. So while I do that, here’s one old post hauled from the archives. It’s from August 2011 and titled “The Three-ring Anti-corruption Circus is in Town.”

Below the fold I quote a bit from the start of that post to lure the reader into the tent.

In his book, The Fatal Conceit, F A Hayek noted that “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” A study of development economics can be seen as a series of depressing lessons on how people afflicted with fatal conceit meddling in areas that they don’t understand end up making a mess, and the resulting needless misery and suffering of untold millions of absolutely innocent victims.

A proper study of economics teaches humility. We are limited beings: our rationality is bounded, our knowledge finite, our information local, our comprehension imperfect. Attempts at the grand design to reach the commanding heights are guaranteed to fail. Look behind any economy that has failed to develop, and you will see the dead hand of powerful ignoramuses throttling the living.

India figured prominently in the development economics course as a case study of how a potentially rich country has been engineered to be desperately poor. It is a demoralizing tale of how people are trapped into poverty because of their bad luck of having been born into system which is designed to be poor.

India’s poverty is engineered, it is by design.

Two fun facts about India stand out starkly. First, India is a very poor country, and second, India is a very corrupt country. But note that while the average Indian is definitely poor by contemporary world standards, the average Indian is not any more morally bankrupt than the average human. Although I don’t have any hard evidence, I am convinced that Indians are at least average when it comes to honesty, intelligence, diligence, social capital, and the rest of it. So how do one explain India’s poverty and corruption? Is one the cause and the other the consequence? Which came first? Or is there another hidden variable which is the cause of these two?

It is my belief that the hidden variable is India’s lack of freedom. The stress is on “hidden” — Indians don’t know that they are really not free. There is a lot of talk about India having attained freedom in 1947. But all that is really cheap talk. With regards to freedom, India is no more free than it was under the British Raj.

The evidence is overwhelming that India’s political leaders are almost uniformly corrupt. It cuts across political party lines. Public corruption is not contained in some specific geographic region. It is not bounded by linguistic or religious divides. The percentage of criminals in the various state and central legislative bodies far exceed that in the general population. What’s more, that percentage has been increasing with time. And the magnitude of the corruption has also been increasing. The average corrupt deal was in tens of crores of rupees a couple of generations ago — small change compared to the deals these days which is counted in billions of dollars.

If Indians are not characteristically uniformly dishonest, how is it that India’s politicians are so acutely dishonest? Perhaps the system selects the most dishonest and the least principled.

]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=90882013-08-24T03:34:05Z2013-04-14T06:27:30ZContinue reading →]]>I don’t usually argue with people’s claims about their objectives but once in a while when I see a claim that is absurdly irrational, I cannot but call bullshit. So it was that I (perhaps irrationally) decided to challenge a person’s stated objective. Here’s what @ReclaimBharat’s twitter header says:

Objective

I responded. Here is a picture of that twitter exchange.

This post is in fulfillment of my promise to @ReclaimBharat.

There are two national parties in India: the Congress and the BJP. The other parties are regional and they don’t have a pan-India following. In the national elections — the Lok Sabha elections — one or the other of the national parties forms the government. The regional parties matter but they are supporting actors on the national stage.

The unfortunate fact is that the Congress party has been ruling India for most of India’s post-1947 existence, either as the sole party to form the government or as the leader of a coalition of parties. We all know what the consequence of that has been: persistent poverty and rampant public corruption. India desperately needs a change of direction. That can only happen if the Congress were to be removed from power.

My claim is that the necessary first condition for India’s progress is that the Congress does not have anything to do with ruling India. It is not sufficient but it is a necessary condition.

Therefore if you are really interested in getting rid of bad governance and corruption, you must not help the Congress to win any election. But if you vote for a party that is guaranteed not to be the ruling party, you are wasting your vote. You could have voted for a party that could have challenged the Congress in forming the government, but instead you are voting for a party that has no hope of ever forming a government.

If you vote for the BJP (instead of say the AAP), you strengthening the opposition to Congress. However, if you vote for the AAP, you indirectly are voting for the Congress because you help them win against the BJP.

I hasten to add that it is not that I have a great deal of love for the BJP — I don’t. But of the two national parties, the BJP is more likely to deliver good governance than the Congress. After all, in all likelihood, any Congress government will be led by the incompetent half-breed Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi and his corrupt lackeys.

Neither AAP nor its leader Arvind Kejriwal has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting more votes than the BJP or the Congress.

My opposition is to the Congress, which has over the last 60 or so years held back India. They have to go. Anyone who votes for the Congress, or indirectly helps the Congress by voting for small regional parties (parties that have no hope in hell of ever getting the votes to unseat the Congress) is in my opinion misguided at best or at worst an agent of the Congress.

I am unwavering in my opposition to the AAP mostly because at its very best, all it will do is to ensure that the Congress continues the rape of India. I think they are not just misguided but perhaps funded by the Congress to split the middle-class votes.

If you want to reclaim Bharat or whatever, make sure that you don’t help the Congress.

]]>71Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=90762014-04-26T08:33:51Z2013-04-11T15:39:41ZContinue reading →]]>“Freedom, freedom, freedom . . . Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, A long way from my home,” sang Richie Havens at Woodstock. Lots of people struggle for freedom. What are they seeking freedom from? From other people. We have to remember this: People need to leave other people alone. Do what you will and don’t impose your will on others. That should be the totality of the law.

Below the fold, the text of my recent column at NitiCentral.com, “The Iron Lady who Fought for Freedom.” But first here’s Richie Havens in 2009 singing that song which he sang in the 1969 music festival held on Yasgur’s farm near Woodstock, NY.

After 40 years, the man still retains his voice. Watch him at Woodstock here.

The Iron Lady who Fought for Freedom.

Margaret Mead, the American anthropologist, is claimed to have said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Though the veracity of that attribution can be doubted, there is no doubt that all significant changes in the world are brought about by committed small groups of people or even just individuals. Not all who toil are rewarded by success but every successful change is claimed by many who had nothing to do with it. But, thankfully, sometimes it is easy to credit those individuals who actually worked hard and the world was much improved as a consequence.

I was reminded of this when I learned that Baroness Thatcher – former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – passed away on 8th April at the ripe old age of 87. What she did for the UK required fierce conviction, an iron will, unremitting labor and immense political savvy. She fought on the side of human freedom and fortunately for her people, she won handsomely.

In all our toils great and small, we always need the help of others. Everything of consequence we achieve is always rooted in ideas that we adopted from thinkers much superior to us. We are not so intellectually tall that we don’t have to stand upon the shoulders of giants to see where the path ahead lies. Thatcher’s accomplishments owe much to ideas of classical liberals who themselves toiled hard for freedom.

I should hasten to add here that “classical liberals” are cats of an entirely different breed from present day “liberals”. The essential difference between the two as I see it is this: the classical liberals valued human freedom and therefore promoted the idea that people should be free from coercion by others—including government coercion. Present days liberals lie on the other end of the line: they want the government to decide how people should live their lives.

Two classical liberals who had an impact on Thatcher are Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman.

Born in Austria-Hungary, British economist and philosopher F. A. Hayek (1899 – 1992), who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1974, is best remembered by the public as the author of the book The Road to Serfdom published in 1944. I consider it to be one of those books every person who has any claims to being well-rounded must read and understand. The ideas contained in that book, if properly understood and internalized by those who wield power over others, can prevent immense human misery, pain and suffering.

Thatcher steered the UK away from the socialist path – the road to serfdom – that it was on in the 1970s. Hayek’s work influenced her profoundly. In her book, The Downing Street Years, (1993), she had this to say about Hayek’s Road to Serfdom:

. . . Such books not only provided crisp, clear analytical arguments against socialism, demonstrating how its economic theories were connected to the then depressing shortages of our daily lives; but by their wonderful mockery of socialist follies, they also gave us the feeling that the other side simply could not win in the end. That is a vital feeling in politics; it eradicates past defeats and builds future victories. It left a permanent mark on my own political character, making me a long-term optimist for free enterprise and liberty . . .

She was a great proponent of human freedom. In her 1995 book, The Path to Power, she traced her ideas about freedom thus: “. . . all the general propositions favouring freedom I had . . . imbibed at my father’s knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek . . .”

The Burke she refers to is the Irish statesman and political theorist, British Member of Parliament Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) who supported American independence. He believed in the benefits that arise from free markets. As an aside, we should remember that Burke pursued (unsuccessfully) the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal from 1772 to 1785, for charges of corruption. Sounds very contemporary, doesn’t it? Which only goes to show that the Indian rulers of today are continuing a tradition of looting the land that goes back centuries. Borrowing the modern technology naming convention, I call the post-independence government of India as “British Raj 2.0.”

But let’s get back to Thatcher.

For centuries, the worldly philosophers (as Robert Heilbroner called economists) have been pondering the causes of worldly wealth and prosperity. The grand-daddy of them all in the Western tradition is the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith. His magnum opus, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published 1776, launched modern development economics. Although very few people read that book (it’s too long, the language impenetrable), Smith’s ideas influenced powerful people, including our Baroness Thatcher. About Adam Smith, she wrote, “ . . . the greatest exponent of free enterprise economics till Hayek and Friedman.”

Which brings me to Milton Friedman. He was born in Brooklyn NY just over a century ago in 1912 to immigrants from Austria-Hungary. Must be something in the Austria-Hungary waters: first Hayek and then Friedman. Uncle Milton (as he is affectionately known by those who love him and his ideas) is credited to have started the “Chicago School” of economics. He won the 1976 Nobel Prize in economics.

Friedman influenced many world leaders. He tried but failed to get Indian leaders to pay attention. That’s another story for another day. In any case, he was a great guide to not just Thatcher, but to Ronald Regan too. He advised Thatcher’s government from 1979 to 1990. His formula was simple: limited government, economic freedom. When Friedman passed away in San Francisco in 2006, Lady Thatcher said, “Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal science.”

Thatcher accomplished a lot because she stood on the shoulders of giants. Thanks to them for pointing the way to freedom, and thanks to her for following the path and improving the lives of her people. As an Indian, I can only hope that one day India gets leaders who can appreciate the value of freedom.

Goodbye Lady Thatcher.

]]>1Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=90652013-04-09T13:49:07Z2013-04-09T13:37:21ZGo click on the poll at rediff.

As of around Tuesday 9th April 6:30 PM IST

I am guessing that the numbers for Modi will drop and Pappu’s number improve on the rediff poll. The #twitterNREGA people have yet to get on the ball.

]]>8Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=90552013-04-09T03:37:42Z2013-04-07T18:16:00ZContinue reading →]]>Most people realize after a little bit of observing and thinking that terrorism is not a matter of poverty. In most cases, the terrorists themselves proclaim their motives quite loudly which does not ever include poverty. The poor may have legitimate grievances against the others but they don’t resort to the indiscriminate killing of people as a result. Every act of terror is ideologically motivated and in most cases it is an intolerant vicious desert religion which promises terrorists rewards in their afterlife. But there are people who are either afraid or too stupid to acknowledge that; instead they blame poverty — and therefore the poor — for terrorism. That is insanely immoral.

Katju, a former judge who now heads the Press Council of India, is one can short of a six-pack. Usually his remarks stink like a steaming pile of horse manure but he outdid himself with his claim that poverty is the cause of terror. He has demonstrated that he lacks the ability to reason. And to think that the man was a judge! Let me repeat what I wrote in another post dealing with the same kind of idiocy, “Blaming the victim“, but with Katju as the subject:

It is immoral, unethical, stupid and insane to pin the acts of barbaric savagery of killing innocents on the poor. The poor suffer enough and endure enough indignities without being also gratuitously blamed for acts of terrorism.

I am disgusted and repelled by Katju’s suggestion that it is the poor retaliating against the system by killing indiscriminately. Shame on you, Mr Katju.

Stanley Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism – and their assumption of immortality.

As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).

Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=90052013-04-05T05:52:49Z2013-04-04T20:41:03ZContinue reading →]]>So the big news is that the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) had a meeting which was addressed by the appointed prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh and the son of his Italian madam, the half-Italian Mr. Raul Vinci who goes by the name Rahul Gandhi.

Appointed PM Dr Singh pondering

Referring to Raul/Rahul as “Pappu” is becoming popular. The name pappu (pronounced ‘pup-poo’) has a passing resemblance to ‘puppy’ but in many parts of north India, pappu is a term of endearment used for very immature little boys.

Our Pappu does not speak very often in public, a fact that helps generate much excitement among the media when he does. The paid media, generally dishonest, goes gaga over Pappu’s pronouncements but the social media is honest and rips into Pappu with glee. I follow the circus from the sidelines. One class act is @TheUnRealTimes.

Anyway, for a while, #PappuCII was trending on Twitter and not #RahulCII. That speaks volumes about how seriously Raul/Rahul is taken by people at least on social media like twitter. But even on traditional media, the word on him was not good. Here’s a blog post “Rahul Speaks” on The Economist

Attending a business lobby, in the midst of a sharp economic slowdown, when the confidence of Indian and foreign investors is plummeting, he should have come with a plan. Ideally he should have sought to bolster Indian businesses’ confidence, to get them investing, believing in rapid growth around the corner.

A sensible plan for the day would have been to reassure Indian business that promoting rapid economic growth is again a priority. Mr Gandhi could have spelled out two or three specific measures, ideally in some detail, that he would support—for example, getting an Indian-wide goods-and-services tax accepted; promoting investment in retail or other industries; or devising a means by which infrastructure could be built much quicker. If he were really brave, he might have set out thoughts on ending bureaucratic uncertainty over corruption, or on land reform.

Instead Mr Gandhi offered a range of thoughts, some earnest, many well-meaning, some apparently irrelevant and some waffle. He discussed India’s soft power abroad (evidence: yoga is popular in New York; Indian film stars are recognised in Spanish nightclubs), waxed at length on the virtues of Indian “complexity” versus foreigners’ “simplicity” and indirectly admitted that India is a terrible place in which to do business. At one point, to bemusement in the audience, he argued that if you can succeed in business in India then you will flourish anywhere, “even on the moon”. India, after two terms of Congress rule, evidently does not have the conditions right for its economy to flourish.

Rahul Gandhi was of course not speaking extempore. He was reading a prepared speech — no doubt written by someone for him. Which means that not only he is not smart enough to speak without notes, and not only is he incapable of composing a speech himself, he is also not capable of figuring out whether a speech written for him is good or not.

What is his life experience beyond sitting on Mummy’s laps? It is sheer effrontery for a country the size and potential of India to be contemplating yet another Nehru / Gandhi, sans any education or practical experience, to be thrusted upon as its leader! Congress”men” (if that can be an acceptable description) and Congress party needs to grow up!

Time and again he cries to get attention and when given the podium, falters pretty badly. Is this a quality of someone who wants to lead a country of 1.2 billion people? I hope, sure not.

Quote ” Indian film stars are recognised in Spanish nightclubs”. Unless Mr. Rahul Gandhi has personally visited these Spanish nightclubs, how does he know first hand about their fondness for Indian films? I am no alien to western culture, but stating something like this is just pure childlike thing to do. Doesn’t increase his stature either.

Why does the Congress party believe in dynasty leadership. This chap, having won the electoral seat from Amethi (stonghold of Congress since time immemorial) cannot justify his claims on the hot seat of prime ministership, let alone being the leader of a huge party.
It’s time Indians stop putting up with all this bullshit and invigorate their minds to take a wise decision in the next elections.

Congress party leaders in India are known for trivializing the success of others. Congress bluntly says don’t talk about ‘development’ since we have given you ‘democracy’. When Narendra Modi spoke about development and economic success of Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi mocked him saying “Even Mao got development to china”. Gujarat doesn’t have any different laws when compared to India, but Rahul Gandhi wanted to make others believe that Gujarat is some sort of totalitarian state where there is no democracy or civil rights. Digvijay Singh, Rahul’s tutor has mocked Modi saying ‘Even Hitler spoke about development’. Congress uses ‘democracy’ as an excuse for its failures.

I have never met Pappu (mercifully) but I am guessing he’s not a bad guy; just an empty-headed playboy born in the lap of luxury, who has never had to think for himself nor do an honest day’s work. Those who support him for the prime minister’s post are guaranteeing India further disasters and not doing him any favors either. Who knows perhaps Pappu would rather be left alone to hang out with his boyfriends and girlfriends, and just live a life of gay (in the old meaning of the word) abandon.

Hey, Congress, leave that pup-poo alone.

PS: In case you mistakenly believe that I have some animosity toward Pappu, perish that thought. I have defended him way back in Jan 2010. See my post “In Defense of Village Idiots“. Here’s an excerpt:

If the people of the village, in the best traditions of the hallowed democratic process, elect the village idiot as the King and Supreme Ruler of the village, I cannot for the life of me bring myself to find fault with the village idiot. It’s not the idiot’s fault that nature dealt him or her a lousy hand in the random genetic draw of life. He’s a congenital idiot and makes no demands on being recognized as a paragon of wisdom and insight. Based on that principle, I indicted the American voter for electing — not once but twice — Mr George W Bush. I can see no reason for not applying that principle to India.

Rahul Gandhi, aka Rahul baba, is a decent enough chap. He didn’t choose to be born to the Gandhi family any more than he sat around selecting his genes from the human gene pool. It was a random draw. He cannot be held responsible for the actions of a fairly large segment of the Indian population who would in all likelihood have him as the ruler of India’s destiny in a short few years. India is a democracy, don’t you know, and the will of the people (admittedly a minority in all known cases) prevails.

Go read it all.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89842014-10-09T17:28:06Z2013-03-29T15:45:06ZContinue reading →]]>It is time once again to lay that old chestnut to rest. The specious claim that the IITs are better than some of the best universities in the world is beyond slack-jawed silliness. I am reminded of that by this tweet by my friend @KiranKS

Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s son wanted to do Computers at IIT. But didn’t get within 200th rank. Went to Cornell. Ivy League a backup!

That is, if you are unable to “do computers” at IIT, your backup plan B is to get into an Ivy league school. So if Ivy league schools are safety schools, imagine how much ahead of them must be the IITs.

I have been debunking that for a long time. See this an old post, “Imagine no Reservations” May 2006 (seven years ago — how the years fly by!):

The fundamental problem with the Indian economy is that the education system is one of the most flawed systems in the country. If there is one sector which is in dire need of reform, it is that education system. The most urgently required reform is to get the government out of it—lock, stock, and barrel. The recent move by the government to further increase quotas in the so-called elite institutions with a view to social justice is akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. No, I take that back: it is akin to scuttling the lifeboats even as the ship is sinking.

I have heard the claim that the Indian education system must be wonderful because the IITs produce so many wonderfully successful NRIs (non-resident Indians), especially in the US. They bolster their argument with the specious reasoning that it is harder to gain admission into IITs than into Ivy league schools, and that Narayana Murthy’s son had to use an Ivy league school as a safety school.

Sure it is harder to get into the IITs than into the top American schools. That does not mean that the IITs are in any way better than those American schools. It is a Herculean task to get into a Mumbai local during commute hours, compared to which using the Paris Metro is a piece of cake. Congestion is not an indicator of quality. When supply is severely limited relative to demand, there will be a mad scramble to get some.

On average, fewer than two out of every one hundred who appear for the entrance exam for IITs get admission. If you were to choose the top two percent of any population, the average quality of that group will be a few sigmas higher than the population average. The IITs turn out good students because those who get in are good to begin with. Then for four years, these way-above average kids compete fiercely among themselves for grades. Finally, from this bunch of super-achievers, those with the highest grades and potential are snapped up by the best American universities. By the time these graduate out of the American universities, they are the crème de la crème who have self-selected themselves for intelligence, drive, ambition, and vision. We read about them as the Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires, and pat ourselves on the back for having a wonderful educational system.

That is most definitely not so. The dysfunctional Indian education system is the saddest and costliest example of governmental ineptitude and malfeasance. The solution to the problem of the Indian educational system has to have at its core getting the government to let go of its chokehold on the system.

I have discussed on this blog at some length the problems of higher education in India. To summarize briefly, the problem is one of scarcity of supply. This is what I call an “engineered scarcity” because it arises from the government control of the system. In free societies with free markets, scarcities are not a chronic feature. Why? Because any scarcity due to say sudden and persistent increase in the demand is met with increased prices which in turn increase supply and the scarcity disappears. For scarcity to persist for decades, the system has to be rigged such that the supply cannot be changed to respond to the demand.

The government of India depends on manufactured scarcity because socialism thrives thus: first create the scarcity through governmental control; then the government doles out the scarce thing to favored groups; the people are brainwashed into thinking that since the government is the source of the supply, it (the government) must be the benevolent entity in the economy; therefore all efforts must be made to keep on the good side of the government so that one is favored with some of the scarce good.

The Indian government controls the supply of education for two reasons. First, it can extract rents from it. Licensing is the mechanism. To get licensed, one has to pay a bribe — often in the hundreds of millions of rupees to officials who have the discretion to refuse the license. Rent seeking is one motivation for the government control. The other reason is related to India’s “democracy” — buying the allegiance of favored vote banks by discriminating for and against specific groups. If you belong to a specific religious group, you get special treatment, and therefore that religious group’s vote is guaranteed.

Manufactured Shortage

This is all old hat and I merely repeat it here for setting the context. The main thing is that education in India suffers from engineered (or manufactured, if you please) shortage. This leads to immense social welfare losses. I propose one mechanism to fix one small part of this welfare loss. I say “small” only because it is small relative to the aggregate set of problems, not because it is trivial. This small part actually amounts to billions of dollars worth of welfare losses.

Now on to the specifics. The problem I will address is one of selecting who gets to have the privilege of going to an elite publicly funded elite institution of higher learning such as the IITs.

FACT A: The demand far outstrips the supply. Why? First, because the education is subsidized. So you get more than you pay for. When something is under-priced, naturally the demand will be higher. Second, even if the education were priced at full cost, the life-time benefit of an IIT education far exceeds the full price.

FACT B: Because of fact A, people are willing to pay a high price to get into an IIT. How much would people be rationally willing to pay? Something approaching the difference between the private cost of an IIT education (tuition fees, food, rent) and the private benefit (the discounted net present value of an IIT education.) So if the discounted net present value of an IIT education is Rs 100 lakhs, and the private cost is Rs 16 lakhs (4 lakhs per year for 4 years), then people would be willing to pay upto Rs 84 lakhs.

But of course no one really pays that much to get into an IIT. For one thing, for Rs 84 lakhs, one can go abroad and get a decent undergraduate degree. The point here is that people are willing to spend a large amount of money to just get into an IIT. And they do indeed spend a lot in their attempt to do so. An entire industry exists just for that purpose. The coaching classes industry. The more successful firms in this industry charge more fees than the IITs charge. And people routinely spend more on trying to get into an IIT than they would spend if they ever got into one.

As I have mentioned previously in a post before, the more successful coaching classes, let’s call “1st order”, themselves have to select whom they will admit — which leads to the absurd situation that there are “2nd order” coaching classes — those that coach students to pass the entrance exams of the “1st order” classes. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan mentions this in his interview. But I’ll come to that in a bit.

Cost of Coaching

For now, let’s do the numbers. The figures say that around 300,000 students appear for the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for IITs. These days it is not unusual for students to go to coaching classes for a couple of years before attempting the JEE. Assume conservatively Rs 1 lakhs per year as the cost of getting coached. Assume that around 2 out of 3 of those who appear for the JEE have attended coaching classes. That gives us an estimate of Rs 6,000 crores (2 lakhs x 300,000) for the size of the IIT coaching industry. (That’s approximately US$ 1.3 billion.)

That $1.3 billion is incurred every year and what is worse, it is amounts to a huge welfare loss since it is essentially a rent-seeking activity and therefore a dead-weight loss to society. The coaching does improve an individual’s chance of getting into an IIT but its aggregate social effect is nothing at all. It just intensifies the competition. It is an educational arms-race.

An analogy I find illuminating is this: if I stand up on my seat at a stadium to get a better view of the game, some others will also do so. Then in a short while, the entire stadium will be standing up and everyone will be exactly where one was in terms of visibility of the game while sitting down but now everyone ends up paying the price of watching the game standing up.

From the pool of 300,000 aspiring students who appear for the JEE, around 10,000 are selected. That’s one student out of 30. But is it true that the students ranked 10,001 to 50,000 are incapable or unprepared for studying in an IIT? Most likely, they are almost as good as those ranked above them. I am confident that if the capacity exited, 50,000 students could enter the IITs and do as well. We all know of people who failed to get into an IIT and ended up being very successful. Recently I learned that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan did not make the IIT grade but was good enough to win a Nobel prize in Chemistry. (That name once again!)

Changing the Rules

The rules of the game have to be changed. The best option would be to get the Indian government out of the life-blood-sucking control of education it has. But that is going to happen the day hell freezes over. The second best option therefore is to fix this welfare loss of competitive exams and make the whole business of coaching classes irrelevant.

Well, that’s it. Forced to recycle stuff every now and again because the canard that IITs are the cat’s whiskers just refuses to die.

]]>116Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89822013-03-27T06:47:47Z2013-03-27T06:47:47ZContinue reading →]]>Sanjeev Sabhlok, Exec Dir of India Policy Institute, is having a conference on “How can India’s governance become world class?” in New Delhi on 13-14th April. Shri Gurcharan Das will give the inaugural address and Sanjeev Sabhlok will present the keynote address. Details are here (pdf). Who should attend?

All Indian citizens who want to learn about good governance principles and practices which are commonplace in the West, but almost entirely absent in India, are a suitable audience for this conference. Participants will learn about a range of intuitive (and some not-so-intuitive) solutions to India’s problems, enabling them to directly address such issues if they have a direct capacity to implement such solutions, or demand that such issues be addressed in India.

I regret that I won’t be able to attend as I am not in New Delhi on those dates. I wish IPI and Sanjeev great success in the event and the mission that he is on.

]]>2Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89762013-03-26T18:21:15Z2013-03-26T18:21:15ZContinue reading →]]>Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, comrades and friends. (Hitchens favored that greeting at many public events.) Sorry for the relative silence around here. Things are in a mess. But there’s hope. Anyway, do leave a comment with your thoughts. I just want to point out a 2008 blog post, “Blaming the Victim“. Comments are closed on that post. So please leave a comment here if you wish.
]]>9Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89552013-03-16T13:25:22Z2013-03-16T13:25:22Z
]]>0Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89482013-03-16T00:59:37Z2013-03-16T00:57:30ZContinue reading →]]> I live in the US and call California home. Yet, I am an Indian; having being born one, I will always be one. The US is home but so is India. I owe loyalty to both countries. I explored that thought in my recent piece on NitiCentral.com. (I do not take responsibility for the title used for the piece.) Here it is, for the record (with a different title.)On Immigrants’ Love for their Old CountryNiticentral.com

Let me start on an autobiographical note. I am what in common parlance is called a ‘non-resident Indian’, an NRI. I have studied, worked and lived in the US for over 30 years. Like hundreds of thousands of others from India (and from scores of other countries in the world), I had come to the US for higher studies – and stayed back.

It is hard not to like living in the US, a rich, developed country. Life is easy, the salaries are among the best in the world and one enjoys freedoms – economic, political, individual freedoms – that are generally hard to get in most parts of the world. I became an immigrant like millions of others who have made the US their home.

I loved living in the San Francisco Bay area. But the old country was never far from my mind. The question that bothered me was why is India so poor. It was a sufficiently important question for me that I even went to the absurd extent of studying economics to get a handle on the matter.

The ties that bind us are many but one of the most enduring must be the one that ties us to our motherland. Over the years I have met hundreds of Indians who have chosen to call the US their home. They all love being in the US but without exception they all have an inalienable connection with the country of their birth.

This is a universal feeling. Being the melting pot and a land of immigrants that the US is – particularly California – I know hundreds of people from around the world. They settled here for various reasons but no one can deny that their identity and their sense of who they are is inextricably tied to where they are from.

My Finnish friend could not be more clear when she says that she is Finnish even though she loves the US. This is not limited to the US, of course. A German friend, for example, who has lived in Paris for most of her adult life, was insistent that her loyalties lie with Germany.

Catch a flight from San Jose, California, and you will see thousands of Americans of Mexican origin going home to Mexico. At San Francisco airport, the flights to India are jam-packed with Americans of Indian origin going to India. The story is the same: People go back to their roots because that’s where they were born but however far they roam, the umbilical cord seems to stretch.

This is normal and understandable. I see it in myself even though I am not a sentimental person. Often when I arrive in India, I recoil from the dirt and filth that is pervasive in India. But never have I not felt the emotion that the Scottish poet Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) expressed so beautifully in his poem ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!

The sense of who we are is of tribal origin. We are nothing if not members of the tribe that nourished us in our childhood. We love the language we learned from our mother, the food that we grew up eating, the religion we were brought up in. Much like the DNA in every cell of our bodies which carry the legacy of all of our ancestors, our souls carry the imprint of our origins. Ineradicable and strong, they define us and our identities.

But circumstances sometimes lead some of us to foreign lands voluntarily or otherwise. Immigrants do love their adopted country but they have a longing for their old country that often surpasses that of those who never left their home country. It is as if they compensate for their having left their family and friends by becoming more attached to their old country.

For immigrants, if they have a soul at all, loyalty and love for the home country will always be a weakness. The matter of divided loyalties is a universal human failing. The US Constitution recognises that and bars people who were not born in the US from becoming the President of the US – the most powerful executive office is reserved for people who do not have divided loyalties. It is not humanly possible to not have divided loyalties when you are born in one part of the world and live in another.

Fortunately, the ordinary immigrant will never be faced with a choice that will demonstrate that divided loyalty. We just don’t matter. I will never be dictating US policy that may adversely affect India or be faced with a policy choice that may favour the US over India. I will never be in a position where I will have to rule against one or the other country.

Which brings me to the final point of this piece. I think that Indians generally don’t understand that putting a reluctant immigrant, a person who is born and brought up in a different country and naturalised almost against her will, in a position of power is a dangerous thing to do. The person does not have to be evil; just being human is enough. “We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation,” wrote Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613 – 1618).

It is both unfair and unwise.

]]>3Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89262015-01-22T16:29:30Z2013-03-09T23:56:33ZContinue reading →]]>An extraordinary claim made despite all the contrary evidence, just as contrary to all evidence, Islamic terror is dismissed with the facile statement that “terrorism has no religion.”

In India, Hindu sponsored terrorism is at its peak. As long as these Hindu terrorists exist, Kashmiris are not safe in any corner of this country. — Prashant Bhushan, Aam Aadmi Party

The English translation says,

“In India, Hindu sponsored terrorism is at its peak. As long as these Hindu terrorists exist, Kashmiris are not safe in any corner of this country.

Prashant Bhushan, Aam Aadmi Party”

AAP is Arvind Kejriwal’s political party. Bhushan is endorsing what Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party claimed — that the greatest threat to India is from “Hindu” terrorism. That’s not the surprising bit. The surprising bit is that some Hindus will certainly vote for AAP. This is part of the big pattern: Hindus acting against their own long-term interests. As long as this goes on, the future is bleak for Hindus — and for India.

]]>12Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89172013-03-07T23:09:06Z2013-03-07T23:04:59ZContinue reading →]]>The power of having truth on your side is Narendra Modi’s biggest weapon against the barrage of pseud-secular bullshit that he has to routinely face from journalists. A few days ago I had posted one example of Modi’s devastating reply to one such journalist (see “Imported Leaders and Imported Laws“) and this is another example that needs to get serious airtime. Below is the video and the English transcript of the conversation between Rahul Kanwal and Modi. The translation is once again thanks to my friend Amit Malviya.

(The video was posted on Sept 2012 on YouTube. I don’t know the date of the interview but it must have been during Modi’s Sadhbhavana Mission.)

English transcript:

Rahul Kanwal (RK) : People ask this question everywhere that God forbid a situation like that (Godhra riots) arises again what will Narendra Modi’s response be this time? Do you guarantee that something like that will never happen again.

Narendra Modi (NaMo) : Do you want to serve the country?

RK : Surely.

NaMo : Do you want to put in some honest effort? Will you do some work? Will you do it? I am asking Rahul.

RK : Tell me. Surely.

NaMo : You do this. 1984′s communal violence report, Bhagalpur’s communal violence report, 1969 Gujarat’s communal violence report, 1992 Mumbai’s communal violence report — all the reports are available, and Gujarat information is available. Across those five, use any parameter you like, and compare. If you realize that better work happened in Gujarat as compared to the other four, will you tell the world? Do this work and then come to me if you have any more questions.

RK : Good work is happening in Gujarat.

NaMo : No no, I am speaking about the communal violence. You asked me a hypothetical question that if riots happen what will Narendra Modi do.

RK : (Interjects) It is an important question.

NaMo : Important, everything is important for you or else why would you come from Delhi all the way here. Your bread and butter depends on it.

RK : True.

NaMo : So it is important. I don’t treat any of your question as less important and I must respect it. I don’t believe you are wasting your time (by asking this question). You are working sincerely.

What I am saying to the question you asked, can you do this much work for the country. Take these five communal violence instances of which four were during Congress rule and one Modi’s under BJP. In these what was the reason for the incidence, what was the response, what was the legal process – all the details are in the report.

Can you just take out the comparisons of all five (riots) and put it in front of the country. Just do this much and all your questions will be solved on their own.

It will be a cold day in hell when idiot journalists can actually do some real work instead of parroting the same old bs about the post-Godhra riots. I sometimes wonder if Modi is not being too indulgent of these lazy morons.

]]>13Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=89092013-03-05T18:17:35Z2013-03-05T18:17:35ZContinue reading →]]>Greetings from San Jose, CA. I am back and ready to get cracking. I have not been writing much of late (how’s that for an understatement) but the little grey cells have been busy. My colleague Rajesh Jain asked me to write an opinion piece on the Wharton India Economic Forum fiasco and I said, “I don’t have anything to add but if you say so, I will drag my lazy knuckles across the keyboard.” So I went over to twitter and wrote a few tweets (follow me @atanudey) about how I felt about Modi being un-invited. Then I wrote a piece that I sent to NitiCentral. They published it. I am pleased to report that the twitterati liked what I wrote. So alright, you should go read my opinion piece — Modi Kicked the Hornet’s Nest — at NitiCentral.com. I append the piece below the fold here, for the record.Narendra Modi, the Man Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nestfrom NitiCentral.com. Mar 5th, 2013

The specifics of the minor storm surrounding the Wharton India Economic Forum 2013 (WIEF2013) to be held March 22-23 are common knowledge. The organising committee first invited Chief Minister Narendra Modi to be the keynote speaker at the event and then a couple of days ago withdrew the invitation which Modi had graciously accepted. Predictably this led to much rejoicing among Modi’s detractors (they are legion) and much outrage among his ardent supporters.

Allow me to address one relatively minor matter first. As in all similar cases, someone or the other decides that this is a case of stifling of free speech. The speaker’s ‘right to free speech’ has been violated, goes the cry. Voltaire is immediately invoked and quoted as having said, “I disagree with what you have to say but I will defend with my life your right to say it.” Just for the record, Voltaire didn’t say that ever but that’s beside the point.

This is not a matter of free speech at all. By their action, the organisers of WIEF are not preventing Modi from speaking. They just don’t want him to speak at their venue. His ability to speak freely elsewhere is not compromised in any way. Freedom of speech means that the speaker is free to speak but it does not impose any obligation on anyone to listen. If WIEF people don’t want to hear what Modi has to say, they are well within their rights to not provide him a platform. So Modi’s supporters, well-meaning though they may be, should tone down their free-speech-violation outrage a bit.

Now to the more substantive matter of whether it is right to invite someone and then retract the invitation after it has been accepted. Under extraordinary circumstances one may be compelled to do so. It could be due to an honest mistake. For instance, you thought the speaker was a highly qualified doctor and therefore most suited to address your medical conference. But then you realise that he’s not a doctor of medicine at all but rather a doctor of philosophy. It’s embarrassing as all heck but not life threatening. You apologise to the invitee for your mistake and life goes on.

That’s not how it happened in this case. The WEIF2013 organisers – business school students at a prestigious highly-ranked US university – must have known everything there is to know about Modi, one of the most celebrated and prominent public figures in India. No new information about him could conceivably become available to them. They must have known that they would face opposition from those who hate Modi. So what happened?

The proverb ‘he who pays the piper, calls the tune’ can provide some clues. Universities rely to some extent on external funding – from benefactors outside the state or alumni. Times are hard and one cannot afford to antagonise those who help one pay the bills. Wharton management perhaps found it was politically (and financially) imprudent to host Modi given that he has been declared persona non grata by certain influential groups with deep pockets. Remember: The Government of India and its agents have deep pockets, not to mention foreign bank accounts.

What the organisers of the conference did in retracting their invitation is understandable. It must be that on weighing matters, they decided that is better to incur the wrath of one camp rather than the other. Understandable but that does not mean that it is not churlish, spineless and lacking the courage of conviction. Besides, it may be terribly myopic. More about that in a bit.

Some consider the WIEF’s action to be an insult to Modi and indeed to India itself. It is nothing of the sort. First, Modi is a big man. For 10 years he has been the target of an unrelenting witch hunt by the Union Government and its agents in the mainstream media, various NGOs with questionable objectives, and foreign Governments who would like to see India embroiled in domestic discord. Yet he has not only survived, he has prospered and helped the people of the State of Gujarat prosper. He cannot be insulted by something as trivial as the retraction of an invitation to speak at a conference, however prestigious the venue.

Second, it is not an insult to India for different reasons. Modi is not India. An insult to Modi – which it isn’t as I argue above – cannot be an insult to India. The WIEF is too inconsequential compared to India for it to be capable of insulting India. What is indeed an insult to Indians is that India is an impoverished (meaning ‘made poor’) country, and it has been made so by bad governance. Lest we forget, India has been misgoverned by the Nehru dynasty and the Congress for most of its post-British Raj existence. The rape of India, not just figuratively, has intensified in the last nine years.

One indicator of India’s impoverishment – and there are too many to list here – is the dismal education system. India’s education system has failed because of bad Government policy formulated for the most part by the Congress and the Nehru dynasty. Not one university in this land of 1.2 billion people is ranked in the top three or four hundred of the world’s universities. Thus tens of thousands of Indians have to go abroad at enormous cost for higher studies. That is why Wharton Business School (like many others) have an annual ‘India Economic Forum’ conference and no Indian university has an ‘US Economic Forum’.

The fact is that India suffers from an on-going insult from its Government and nothing that a bunch of misguided business school students can do ever match the injury that the Nehru dynasty has inflicted on India’s wellbeing.

The WIEF matter is inconsequential in the larger scheme of things but it is significant in what it signals. It signals that Modi’s opponents are shivering in their boots. Modi’s address last month at Shri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi, scared the living daylights out of the Congress-led UPA and its fellow-travellers. They could well imagine how much more damage Modi would do to them in a talk that would only amplify his voice even more. Modi has to be stopped at every corner, on every street, and with all they can muster. He kicked the hornet’s nest at SRCC and they are buzzing with furious anger.

The Congress-led UPA wants Modi stopped not because he is bad for India but rather because he is bad for those who have misgoverned India for so many decades. Modi is good for India. If Modi continues on the trajectory that he is on, he will transform India from an impoverished country to one that is prosperous and powerful. That would mean that those who have profited from India’s misfortunes – namely, the corrupt domestic Governments and enemy foreign Governments – will be forced to abandon their fiefdom.

India has the potential to be as powerful as a nation of 1.2 billion is capable of being. To realise that potential what India needs is leadership. Modi has demonstrated that he is a man with vision, determination, intelligence and capable of superhuman effort. Every weapon they have fired against him has made him stronger. He is, to borrow a term from Taleb, “antifragile” – the stress is like exercise, building a more resilient body. When – not if, but when – he becomes India’s Prime Minister, India will finally be on its way to fulfilling its potential.

And in the end, this sordid event will be just a brief footnote. The students of the IEF at Wharton are myopic. They will be gone in a year or two. But for years to come Wharton will pay the price of having needlessly antagonised so many Indians, Indians who would be far, far richer than they are today and would have contributed to its success.

]]>4Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=88912013-02-23T06:55:52Z2013-02-23T06:55:52ZContinue reading →]]>Even a cursory look at the main stream media gives me the impression that Narendra Modi is the cause of immense heartburn among journalists and commentators. These worthies kowtow, scrape and bow, spinelessly genuflect and grovel in the presence of politicians. The rule I use to figure out how corrupt a politician is this: note how low the journalists bend.

But when it comes to Modi, their hackles rise. He’s incorruptible and they don’t bend. They become combative and confrontational. They raise poisoning the well to a fine art with their accusations against Modi. The great thing is how Modi responds to them so effortlessly. The man’s responses are devastating but I am not sure that his interlocutors quite get it. If they had been that smart, they would have known not to poke the lion. Here’s a “for example” for you.

For the benefit of those who don’t follow Hindi, I asked my friend Amit Malviya to help me with an English translation of the above video.

Navika: On the Godhra issue – But there have been comments that have come from senior leaders of the Congress saying that you should be actually hanged for what happened in Gujarat in 2002.

Narendra Modi: Congress spokesperson has said that if Modi was in any other country he would have been hanged. In a way this is Congress party’s authorized statement since their spokesperson has said it, which means it is Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s statement.

I am not surprised with this statement of Congress because those who import leaders from outside now also want to import law from outside.

Second thing is when they make such a statement, they make a grave allegation against the judicial process of India. They should understand that by making such a statement they have expressed lack of confidence in the Indian judicial process and it is not expected of a party like Congress.

Thirdly, They say if there were foreigners they would have hanged me. When we were fighting for independence, all the foreign judges used to sit here and our freedom fighters have been hanged to death then too and if it happens again then it doesn’t bother me.

And third point, May be they (Congress) think there is a law in Itlay which can hang me. I would like to request the Congress party that if it is their intention then let them put me on trial in Itlay and hang me. But I have a request to the Govt of the day that even if I am hanged, the process of hanging should happen in India because I want that in my last breath there should be fragrance of sweat of 100cr Indians.

Which brings me to one thing that puzzles me no end: how on earth does one compare Modi with Raul Vinci aka Rahul Gandhi? Surely it is silly to compare a Lion from the Gir forest with a half-Italian rodent.

]]>5Atanu Deyhttp://www.deeshaa.orghttp://www.deeshaa.org/?p=88832013-02-21T12:42:31Z2013-02-21T12:37:05ZContinue reading →]]>In a hard-hitting piece on NitiCentral.com, Kanchan Gupta responds to a hatchet job that someone called Lyla Bavadam did for Frontline, a sister publication of the misnamed “The Hindu” newspaper.
Kanchan notes that the world recognizes the ‘Gujarat Story’

. . . as one of remarkable economic achievement coupled with social development over the past decade. Hard-nosed investors and cynical industrialists acknowledge the rapid turnaround witnessed by this State on account of radical policy initiatives and their implementation by the Modi Government. Yesterday’s global economic power houses fallen upon bad times today are making a beeline for Gujarat to try and hitch their fortunes to those of this State in the hope that it would lead to a miraculous recovery for them.

All this and more is there for all to see but our blinkered Left-liberal media, controlled by an overweening commentariat dependent on crumbs from the high table of a status quoist and thoroughly corrupt New Delhi Establishment, will just not take note of facts as they exist. Instead, newspapers, journals and news channels continue to peddle fiction that is of a piece with their jaundiced perception of reality. It is a command performance – the morally bankrupt Pied Piper of New Delhi leads; the intellectually bankrupt intelligentsia which dominates the Left-liberal media follows.

Kanchan’s piece is an elegant response to a poorly written, illogically argued, blatantly partisan piece of trash. Not being a respected journalist like Kanchan Gupta, I am unconstrained by niceties and have the freedom to baldly state that Lyla Bavadam is a brain-dead retard. Evidence: her piece titled “Mirage of Development.”

Let me take just one out of numerous examples of idiocy. At one point she displays a table that lists states ordered with decreasing child mortality. Gujarat appears at the bottom of that short list. She’s so stupid as to not understand that the lower in that list that a state is, the better it is. She’s an innumerate.

The hatred for Modi has reached pathological proportions among the Congress chaprasis and they are clearly deranged. I think it is a good development because their insanity reveals their impotence.